Former professional American football player Phillip Adams was suffering from a degenerative brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), when he shot and killed six people in April, medical specialists said on Tuesday.
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A post-mortem examination of Adams’ brain by neuropathologists at Boston University found the 32-year-old showed signs of “unusually severe” brain damage.
“Phillip Adams had an extraordinary amount of pathology associated with the frontal lobe, the area of the brain behind the forehead,” said Ann McKee, director of the facility’s ETC Center, comparing this case to that of Aaron Hernandez, ex- New England Patriots player who was convicted of murder in 2015, before ending his days in prison two years later.
CTE, which cannot be detected in living individuals, is a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. It can cause a range of behavioral symptoms, including aggression, impulsivity, depression, anxiety, paranoia, suicidal tendencies, as well as progressive cognitive symptoms such as memory loss.
The specter of ETC has haunted American football and the NFL since the early 2000s.
Several scientific studies have shown a link between this cerebral degeneration and the repeated shocks to the head, concussions and other cranial traumatisms which too often enamel the career of a player.
The most recent of these studies, in July 2017, notably analyzed the brain tissue of 111 players who passed through the NFL and often died prematurely: ETC was detected in 110 of them.
A prevalence that forced the league, sued in the early 2010s by 4,500 former players or their heirs, to pay compensation of one billion dollars for the victims, while modifying certain rules. Thus, since 2018, helmet-to-helmet impacts are prohibited.
Adams shot and killed Robert Lesslie, a 70-year-old doctor, his wife Barbara Lesslie, 69, two of their grandchildren, aged 9 and 5, and two men working on an air conditioning system at the Lesslie’s home in Rock Hill , in South Carolina, on April 7, 2021.
AFP
The perpetrator was found dead shortly afterwards from a gunshot wound he himself had inflicted on a nearby house.
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