Former NFL running back Lawrence Phillips was found dead early Wednesday morning at Kern Valley State Prison in California.
A spokesperson told Josh Peter of USA Today Sports that Phillips’ death is being investigated as a suicide. The 40-year-old was facing the possible death penalty for allegedly murdering his former cellmate. A preliminary hearing was held on Tuesday, during which a Superior Court judge ruled that there is “sufficient cause to believe” Phillips committed murder. That cleared the way for a trial.
Phillips had been in prison since he was sentenced to 31 years in 2009 for trying to run over three teens with his car and assaulting his girlfriend. Plenty of other disturbing stories have come out about him since his original sentencing, and it is clear he had some serious issues.
Phillips’ former cellmate, Damion Soward, was strangled to death last year a short time after Phillips wrote a chilling letter to his mother confessing that his anger issues might lead to him doing something drastic.
“I feel myself very close to snapping,” he wrote in a letter dated March 5, 2015. “My anger grows daily as I have become fed up with prison. I feel my anger is near bursting and that will result in my death or the death of someone else.”
Soward was murdered roughly a month after the letter was written.
