Former NFL player Lawrence Phillips found dead in prison cell

California prison officials say former National Football League and CFL running back Lawrence Phillips has been found dead in his prison cell, and they suspect suicide.

Phillips, 40, was found unconscious just after midnight during a security check by staff at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano outside Bakersfield, the state corrections department said in a statement.

“Lawrence Phillips is dead-and officials are investigating his death as a suicide after he was found in his prison cell”, TMZ reported on Wednesday.

“He was an intelligent person and had some good qualities”, Tom Osborne, Phillip’s coach at Nebraska, told the Associated Press news agency.

When he was in college at Nebraska, Phillips was a great back for the Cornhuskers, a star on their 1994 and 1995 national championship teams.

Lawrence Phillips’ mug shot from when he was arrested in 2005.

In 2008, Phillips was sentenced to 31 years in prison for convictions that included domestic violence, spousal abuse, false imprisonment and vehicle theft. He played two games for the Dolphins in 1997 before attempting to relaunch his career in the NFL Europe.

The Rams took him with the sixth pick of the 1996 NFL Draft, while he was on probation. That same day, the team traded his predecessor, future Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis, to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Phillips’ former cellmate, Damion Soward, was strangled to death past 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.

49ers: Trying to make a comeback after a year off due to injury, vying for a starting job, Phillips was waived by San Francisco in November 1999. Various arguments and spats with coaches from the Arena Football League and Canadian Football League officially put an end to his football career and set him upon the path that ended in a jail cell Wednesday.