The former running back Lawrence Phillips is suspected of killing his cellmate in a Central California prison, officials said Monday. Phillips’s cellmate at Kern Valley State Prison was found lifeless early Saturday and was later pronounced dead, a prison spokesman said in a statement.
Phillips, 39, once one of the nation’s top college football players while at Nebraska, is serving a sentence of more than 31 years. He was convicted of choking his girlfriend in 2005 and of driving his car into three teenagers later that year.
His cellmate was Damion Soward, 37, who was serving 82 years to life for a first-degree murder conviction.