The brain of Phillip Adams – the former NFL player who, according to police, murdered a South Carolina doctor, three family members and a repairman before fatally shooting himself – will be tested for a degenerative disease that has affected a number of professional athletes and has been shown to cause violent mood swings and other cognitive disorders, according to the local coroner.
York County Coroner Sabrina Gast said in a statement Friday that she had received approval from Adams’s family to include the procedure as part of his autopsy, which will be performed at the Medical University of South Carolina. The hospital will partner with Boston University, whose Center for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is researching the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel, the website said.
Police said Adams went to Robert and Barbara Lesslie’s home on Wednesday and shot them dead, two of their grandchildren, 9-year-old Adah Lesslie and 5-year-old Noah Lesslie, and James Lewis, a 38-year-old Gaston air conditioning technician. who was working there. He also shot Lewis’ colleague, 38-year-old Robert Shook from Cherryville, North Carolina, who was flown to a hospital in Charlotte, where he was in critical condition “ fighting hard for his life, ” said a cousin, Heather Smith Thompson. .
York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said investigators have not found out why Adams carried out the attack.
Tolson said evidence left on the shooting scene led investigators to Adams as a suspect. He said they went to Adams ‘parents’ house, evacuated them, and then tried to persuade Adams to come out. They eventually found him dead from a single gunshot wound to the head in a bedroom, he said.
It will take months to get results from the tests for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can only be diagnosed at an autopsy. The condition has been found in former servicemen, football players and boxers and others who have suffered repeated head injuries. A recent study found signs of the disease in 110 of the 111 NFL players whose brains were inspected.
Several years ago, the league agreed to pay $ 1 billion to retired players who claimed to have misled them about the dangers of playing football.
Adams, 32, played in 78 NFL games over six seasons for six teams. He joined the 49ers in 2010 as a seventh-round draft pick from the state of South Carolina, and although he rarely started, he went on to play for New England, Seattle, Oakland and the New York Jets before joining the Atlanta Falcons shut down. in 2015.
As a rookie at the end of the 2010 season, Adams sustained a serious ankle injury, which resulted in an operation that involved inserting several screws into his leg. He never played for the 49ers again, released just before the 2011 season started. Later, with the Raiders, he suffered two concussions during three games in 2012.
Whether he sustained long-term concussion-related injuries was not immediately clear. Adams would have been ineligible for testing due to such injuries as part of a wide settlement between the league and his former players, as he had not retired in 2014.
Adams’ father told a Charlotte television station that he blamed football for his son’s problems, which may have led him to commit Wednesday’s violence.
“I can say he’s a good boy – he was a good boy, and I think football confused him,” Alonzo Adams told WCNC-TV. “He didn’t talk much and didn’t bother anyone.”
Adams’ sister told USA Today that “her brother’s mental health has deteriorated rapidly and terribly badly in recent years” and that the family noted “extremely disturbing” signs of mental illness, including escalating mood and neglect of personal hygiene.
In a statement to McClatchy Newspapers, Adams’ parents and siblings gave their condolences to the Lesslie, Lewis and Shook families, saying, “The Phillip we know is not a man capable of the atrocities he committed Wednesday.”
The relatives further said that they did not know ‘whether football played a role’ in the violence, but ‘we do know that there must be a catalyst’.
Gerald Dixon, a former NFL linebacker who retired in 2001, said that when he coached Adams in high school, the young player was a team leader, but also gentle and humble.
Dixon added that he had spoken to Adams a few months ago and had not noticed any signs of depression or other mental health problems. “Every time I spoke to him, he was always happy and just reminisced about old things,” he said.
Dixon acknowledged that the repeated blows to the head sustained in the game could have affected Adams, having negatively affected many of the other NFL players Dixon has known who were later diagnosed with CTE.
“You never know what’s going on in someone’s head after they go through this concussion,” Dixon said.
Agent Scott Casterline told The Associated Press that Adams did not participate in the physical and mental health programs easily accessible to ex-players.
“We encouraged him to explore all of his handicap options and he wouldn’t do it,” said Casterline, noting that Adams’ career was undermined by the 2010 ankle injury. not accept health tips that were offered to him. He said he would, but he wouldn’t. “