Ex-NFL star found dead in prison

Ex-NFL star Lawrence Phillips has been found dead in his prison cell on Wednesday, January 13.

The former running back at Nebraska and first-round NFL draft pick eas found unresponsive in his California prison cell and was taken to an outside hospital where he died.

Prison authorities are suspecting that the 40-year-old has had a suicide.

Phillips was in prison serving a 31-year-sentence for choking his girlfriend in 2005 in San Diego.

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He was also convicted of driving his car into three teens later that year after a pickup football game in Los Angeles.

The former NFL star has been in solitary confinement since April 2015 after he was suspected of killing his cellmate, Damion Soward.

Phillips was once one of the nation's top college football players at the University of Nebraska.

He first got into trouble after beating a former girlfriend hours after a spectacular performance in a September 1995 win at Michigan State University.

Phillips pleaded no contest to third-degree misdemeanor assault and trespassing and was sentenced to one year of probation.

Nebraska recruited Phillips out of a West Covina, California, group home, and he was a key member of the Cornhuskers' national championship teams in 1994 and 1995. He ran for 165 yards and two touchdowns in a Fiesta Bowl win over Florida that clinched the national championship, then declared he would enter the 1996 NFL draft as an underclassman.

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He was drafted No. 6 overall by the St. Louis Rams in 1996, but he was released the next year for insubordination. He also played for the Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers but was out of the NFL by 2000.