Phillip Adams, the former NFL player who killed five people Wednesday in South Carolina before committing suicide, wasn’t a monster, but his mental health was deteriorating, according to his sister.
‘His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,’ Lauren Adams told USA Today. ‘There was unusual behavior. I’m not going to get into all that [symptoms]. We definitely did notice signs of mental illness that was extremely concerning, that was not like we had ever seen.
‘He wasn’t a monster. He was struggling with his mental health.’
Phillip Adams, the former NFL player who killed five people Wednesday in South Carolina before committing suicide, wasn’t a monster, but his mental health was deteriorating, according to his sister. In this 2010 picture, Adams is treated after breaking his ankle
Both family members and his agent said Phillip Adams struggled without football in his life
The Associated Press reported that Adams’s parents lived near his victims, who included (circled in red) Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70, and his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69, as well as grandchildren Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5.
Adams, who played in the NFL as a cornerback from 2010 until 2015, was not violent, she explained. However, the 32-year-old had become increasingly aggressive.
‘In conversations, it would escalate to arguments,’ she said. ‘Normally it would just be a normal conversation. His temperament had changed where he was super laid back forever and all of the sudden he had that temper. You could just tell that something was off.’
Echoing comments her father Alonzo Adams made Thursday, saying that football was to blame for Phillip’s problems, Lauren said she remembers her brother’s decline as he was stepping away from the game and returning to his native South Carolina in 2015.
Adams’s agent, Scott Casterline, agreed, telling The Associated Press that his client was ‘lost without football, somewhat depressed.’
Adams, who suffered a pair of concussions in a three-week span in 2012, had recently applied for disability benefits from the NFL, but was struggling to get approval, according to his sister.
Adams was never a standout in the NFL, but he did play regularly over six seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Oakland Raiders, New York Jets, and Atlanta Falcons. His best seasons came in his two years in Oakland, where he appeared in 31 games and recorded a pair of interceptions. He was also a punt returner
‘I know he had been applying for disability and he said they were making it hard for him,’ Lauren Adams said. ‘And towards the end he felt like they were trying to basically stiff him on money.
‘He felt like they were just trying to nickel and dime him. I think he got upset about that and that’s kind of where it started, with him kind of feeling like the whole world was against him.’
‘We encouraged him to explore all of his disability options and he wouldn’t do it,’ Casterline told the AP. ‘I knew he was hurting and missing football but he wouldn’t take health tips offered to him. He said he would but he wouldn’t.’
It is not clear if he was applying for benefits because post-concussion problems or for any lingering issues with the broken ankle he suffered as a rookie with the San Francisco 49ers in 2010 – an injury that may have impacted the remainder of his brief career.
Adams had defied the odds by making the 49ers roster after going undrafted out of South Carolina State in 2010, but subsequently bounced around the NFL with five other teams following his gruesome ankle injury.
‘He had an injury his rookie year,’ Casterline said. ‘Some teams wrote him off and he had that stigma of a guy who was hurt.
‘It was hard for him to walk away from the game, especially a guy as dedicated as he was.’
Whatever the case, Adams had clearly lost his taste for football.
‘He really didn’t want anything to do with football,’ she said. ‘He didn’t watch it. If we were watching it, he would leave the room or ask us to turn it off.’
Describing her brother’s decline, Lauren Adams said Phillip was once a role model in Rock Hill, South Carolina, often donating clothing to less fortunate children.
‘He loved mentoring kids,’ she said of Phillip, who did not drink or do drugs, according to Casterline and former Cowboys cornerback Kevin Smith.
But more recently, Phillip Adams had become distant, moving away from the family 18 months ago without saying where he was staying.
‘We wouldn’t hear from him for months,’ she said. ‘It was totally unlike him. He’s always been a family person.’
Although he did return home, Adams’s appearance also began to suffer, which was a departure for him, according to Lauren.
‘He’s always been into looking nice,’ she said. ‘Like he’s always been like a ladies man. He stopped dating. It was just a lot things that were part of his character that just disappeared.
‘So many people come up to me or call me or text me and ask me, ”What’s going on with your brother?” And I’m like, ”I don’t know”’
Smith told the AP that Adams opened a smoothie shop before the pandemic, but had to shut it down, quickly.
The Associated Press reported that Adams’s parents lived near his victims, who included Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70, and his wife, Barbara Lesslie, 69, as well as grandchildren Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5.
A sixth victim, Robert Shook, 38, remains in critical condition at a local hospital.
According to the AP, Adams was reportedly a patient of Lesslie, who worked for decades as an emergency room doctor. It is not known publicly why Lesslie was treating Adams, or if any head injury was involved.
On Thursday, Adams’s father Alonzo told Charlotte, North Carolina station WCNC that he blames football for what happened to his 32-year-old son.
‘I can say he’s a good kid,’ Alonzo Adams said. ‘I think the football messed him up.’
Alonzo Adams did not go into further detail, but Phillip suffered at least two concussions over three games while playing for the Oakland Raiders in 2012. Curiously, Adams missed only one game because of the brain injuries.
One of those concussions occurred in a game against Cleveland when Adams collided with a teammate while hauling in an interception.
He was later asked by Raiders.com to describe what was going through his head on the play.
‘I don’t know,’ Adams said. ‘I couldn’t tell you, but my teammates, the whole secondary we’re all going for that ball in the heat of the battle. I was kind of woozy, but, we got the turnover and I was happy about that.’
Raiders spokespeople in Las Vegas did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for more information about Adams’s concussion history.
It is not clear if he suffered any long-term effects from the concussions. He was not eligible for testing under the league’s broad $1 billion concussion settlement with players because he had not retired prior to the 2014 season.
Concussions have not been definitively linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.
CTE can only be diagnosed posthumously.
Several former NFL players who were diagnosed with CTE died by suicide, including Adams’s former Patriots teammate, Aaron Hernandez, who hanged himself in prison following a murder conviction.
‘We don’t know why people get CTE,’ Manning told DailyMail.com in 2018. ‘I think the most that it’s been looked at is in football players, but all that we know is what the brain looks like after they die. We don’t know what happens during people’s lives. We also don’t know how the findings correlate with people’s symptoms.’
As Manning explained, there is no established connection between football and CTE, nor is there a proven link between concussions and CTE: ‘There’s a lot of research that needs to be done to fill in the blanks there.’
To many, the 2017 Boston University CTE Center study that posthumously diagnosed 110 out of 111 former NFL players with the disease seemed rather convincing, if not conclusive.
According to Lee E. Goldstein, a professor at Boston University School of Medicine and College of Engineering, concussions may not be an indicator for CTE, which can lead to lead to behavioral or cognitive issues, and even dementia.
‘We have a substantial number of cases in the [brain] bank who have died and meet the neuropathological diagnostic criteria for CTE, and have never had a concussion,’ Goldstein told DailyMail.com in 2019.
Although he was never a standout in the league, he did play regularly over six seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Raiders, New York Jets, and Atlanta Falcons. His best seasons came in his two years in Oakland, where he appeared in 31 games and recorded a pair of interceptions. He also had success as a punt returner.
Former Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie described Adams as a team player to USA Today.
‘I remember him being appreciative; a gracious that-he-was-on-the-team kind of guy,’ McKenzie said. ‘A very hard worker … I never had a coach, trainer, strength coach or teammate say they had any issue with him.
‘He was a non-issue guy. He just wasn’t talented enough. That’s why he bounced around. He got opportunities, though, because he worked hard.’
Adams earned just over $3 million over parts of his six NFL season, according to Spotrac.com.
He is the second former NFL player to be accused of murder this week, following ex-New York Giants receiver Travis Rudolph, who was arrested on first-degree murder charges in Florida.
