Murders, Attempted Murders and Homicides

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    The Week When Sports Would Not Let America Look Away

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    As their games continued in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr, the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays made powerful statements against gun violence.Before the big N.B.A. game Tuesday night, there was no talk of basketball: only frustration, rage and pain.On Thursday, sports slid into the background once again, as was appropriate, replaced by heartbreaking facts, courtesy of two Major League Baseball teams, and calls to do something to end the carnage.Something is wrong in America. We can’t figure out how to stop aggression and death.The rampage killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, have again shaken us to the core. We brace against the plague of gun violence that threatens every part of the country: grocery stores and churches, street corners and shopping centers, and schools filled with grade school children.Daily life feels at any moment like it could turn into horror.Amid all of this, our games go on. Important games featuring remarkable teams. The Golden State Warriors played their familiar brand of beautiful basketball in the conference finals of the N.B.A. playoffs. The Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, division rivals and contenders to win this year’s World Series, played a key series in St. Petersburg, Fla.Sports can be a tonic during hard times. Games and great performances offer a chance to wash away awful emotion. To move on and even forget. But hours after 19 students and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Steve Kerr, Golden State’s head coach, a man who knows firsthand the suffering caused by gun violence, would not let us turn from the agony completely.From Opinion: The Texas School ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.Michelle Goldberg: As we come to terms with yet another tragedy, the most common sentiment is a bitter acknowledgment that nothing is going to change.Nicholas Kristof, a former Times Opinion columnist: Gun policy is complicated and politically vexing, and it won’t make everyone safe. But it could reduce gun deaths.Roxane Gay: For all our cultural obsession with civility, there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s acceptance of the constancy of mass shootings.Jay Caspian Kang: By sharing memes with each new tragedy, we have created a museum of unbearable sorrow, increasingly dense with names and photos of the deceased.And the Yankees and Rays would soon come together in a way that demanded attention be paid to what matters — and what mattered most was not about wins or losses or the battle for first place in the American League East.In the minutes before Game 4 of his team’s playoff series, Kerr sat at a table before reporters and powerfully let loose. Nothing he said was scripted. Everything came from the heart, molded by personal experience. And it had nothing to do with basketball or sports.“In the last 10 days, we’ve had elderly Black people killed in Buffalo, Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. And now we have children murdered at school,” Kerr said, his words forceful enough to go viral almost instantly. His voice quaked. His eyes narrowed with burning-ember emotion.He pounded the table, as his voice rose.“I’m fed up. I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight, but I want every person listening to this to think about your own child or grandchild or mother or father, sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today?“When are we going to do something?” he added.“Enough!”Kerr has long spoken out in news conferences and other venues for stricter gun laws and against our society’s thirst for violence. He did so again this week, denouncing the politicians who do nothing and specifically railing against the Senate for not even passing legislation as simple as a requirement for universal background checks. In that moment, watching him was to watch a man struggling to make sense of a tragedy he is all too familiar with. In 1984, during Kerr’s freshman year at the University of Arizona, his father, Malcolm, was shot and killed by assassins outside his office at the American University in Beirut.With the dark cloud of wanton gun violence growing in America, don’t expect silence.Political statements are more rare in baseball, still nominally our national pastime though its dwindling audience has aged toward conservatism. Even the staid Yankees — so tradition-bound a team that they don’t even allow players to wear facial hair — and their division rival collaborated on a singular message. Instead of posting the usual stats and scoring updates during their game Thursday, both teams shared facts about gun violence to millions of followers.When they played on Thursday, their Twitter and Instagram posts focused entirely on the death toll of guns in this country.“58 percent of American adults or someone they cared for have experienced gun violence,” read one of the scores of posts.“This cannot become normal,” read another. “We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes.”Another: “Every day, more than 110 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and injured.”Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ vice president of communications, put the posts in perspective in a text message to my colleague David Waldstein this week. “As citizens of the world, it’s hard to process these shootings and just slip back into a regular routine,” Zillo said. “For one night, we wanted to reflect and draw attention to statistics that carry so much more significance and weight than batting average.”Well said. And well done.I’m one of the legions touched by gun violence: the suicide of a favorite great-uncle, the slaying of a distant cousin, an infant, by a stray bullet in a gang shootout. My pain swims in the same deep currents that swell across America. Together we grieve. Together we decide how to respond.This week, Steve Kerr, and the Yankees and Rays were there to remind us not to dive too deep into the easy distraction of sports — and that action is required to end this madness. More

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      A Minneapolis High School Football Team and Its Coach Move On

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      Charles Adams, a former police officer, and the Minneapolis North team are warily moving forward after the Derek Chauvin verdict offered a rebuke to one police killing in their community.Third-degree murder. Guilty.Second-degree murder. Guilty.Second-degree manslaughter. Guilty.As he heard a judge hand down verdicts at the Derek Chauvin murder trial last week, Charles Adams, a high school football coach and former Minneapolis cop, did not celebrate. There is no reviving George Floyd, Chauvin’s victim, and much to change in the culture of law enforcement.Adams couldn’t stop thinking and worrying about his team, the Polars of Minneapolis North.“The streets of my city don’t need more unrest,” he recalled thinking, as we spoke last week. “And my players, they don’t need more violence. What they need is relief from all the pressure they are constantly under.”Adams, 40, has a unique view of that pressure.Known as a pillar of the city’s economically depressed, predominantly Black north side, he is one of Minnesota’s best high school football coaches, responsible for turning a moribund team into a perennial power and state champion.He also served 20 years on the Minneapolis police force, a Black cop working the neighborhoods in which he was raised and following the footsteps of his father, a precinct chief who has served nearly four decades on the M.P.D.Just like his father, Adams made it a point to work with residents instead of lording power over them. As I chronicled in a column last October, he has always been focused on helping his community’s youth.“With the verdicts done, people need to know what it’s been like for kids who’ve grown up in this city like the players on my team,” he said. “They’ve lived through so much trauma.”And not just over the past year of the coronavirus pandemic. Adams said all of his players were well aware of the long string of deadly police shootings of Black men that have racked Minneapolis throughout their adolescence, even beyond Floyd in 2020.There was Jamar Clark, shot to death by the police blocks from Minneapolis North in 2015.And Philando Castile, shot to death by the police in a nearby suburb in 2016.And Daunte Wright, shot to death this month by a suburban police officer who is said to have thought her gun was a Taser.Those killings and the long history of tension between law enforcement and Minneapolis’s Black community have given the Polars an understandable wariness of the police. The team’s tight bond with Adams and his assistant coaches, many of whom are Black police officers, allows the players to heed their coaches’ advice on how to act when confronted by cops.North football players lined up to walk to the stadium for their first home game of the season in October 2020.Tim Gruber for The New York Times“For us, it’s kind of like we are always in a pickle,” Tae-Zhan Gilchrist, 17, an offensive lineman on the team, said when we spoke after the Chauvin trial. “We got to watch out for the crime in our neighborhood but avoid the police, too. Everywhere you go, there is always this tension. Even though you might be smiling and having a good time, danger and worry are always in the back of your head.”Gilchrist paused.“It’s heartbreaking,” he said, “but it is life. There are certain things in life you can’t avoid.”Every player I’ve talked to from Minneapolis North’s football team over the last year has expressed similar sentiments.The players also told me how their team has been a refuge.“The way the coaches care about us and understand what we’re going through, being with the team is like therapy for us,” said Azrie Yeager, 15, a freshman who plays on the offensive line. “After a long day of hearing about all the troubles, it’s been great to know that there’s a place where I can open up. It just clears the mind.”When I spoke to the team last October, it was early in a season truncated by the pandemic. North had been favored to make it to the state small school championship game for the second year in a row. It finished with a 6-1 record and a section title, but high school officials canceled the state tournament, cutting off any championship run.Adams and his team didn’t complain about the decision, though. At least they’d had a football season. Through fall and winter, Minneapolis North held classes virtually. Businesses and community centers closed. In the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, with so much of life shut down and so much despair and tension in the air, violence spiked. It touched the team in a searing way: A player from the 2016 state champion team came home from college and was shot to death near the high school.The players needed an outlet. For many of them, football was the only option.“Where would we have been without football this year?” Adams wondered aloud as we spoke. “In serious trouble. We needed it this year more than ever.”He needed the ballast as much as his players did. After 20 years, Adams left the M.P.D. last October for a better-paying job as director of security for the Minnesota Twins. He wouldn’t have taken the position if the Twins had said he would not be given the time to keep coaching North.Being a Minneapolis police officer is still deep in his bones, though. Adams said that as the Chauvin trial wore on and the verdict neared, it was hard for him to let go of the fear that if Chauvin received anything less than guilty on all charges destructive protests would again occur.Adams shuddered at the memory of the night last year, not long after Floyd’s murder, when protest raged in Minneapolis, and he dressed in riot gear to head to the front lines.That evening he spoke to his players over videoconference to tell them he loved them and that he wasn’t sure he’d live through the night to see them again.The memory, he said, caused something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.Deep pain. The coach knows what that’s like.So do his players.With the Chauvin trial over, Adams and his team are warily moving forward.“There’s still so much to be done and we have to continue to be aware and fight for our rights,” Gilchrist said. “The trial is over, but every morning here you still wake up and wonder, ‘What terrible thing is going to happen next?’” More

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      C.T.E. May Not Fully Explain Phillip Adams's Shooting Spree

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      A finding of C.T.E. can help explain violence and erratic behavior by former football players, but it will not give a clear picture of why Phillip Adams fatally shot seven people, including himself.It has become a grim but familiar pattern: Soon after an N.F.L. player dies, his family must decide whether to donate his brain to be tested for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head.That was the choice facing the relatives of Phillip Adams, who fatally shot six people and then himself in his hometown, Rock Hill, S.C., this month. The family asked that his brain be sent to the C.T.E. Center at Boston University, the leading site for research on the disease, which has been found in hundreds of football players and other athletes but can be diagnosed only after death.If investigators request an expedited diagnosis — and thus far they have not — the researchers at Boston University would still need about four months to produce a definitive answer.While it has become common for N.F.L. families to question whether, and how deeply, C.T.E. affected a player, the sudden and atypical nature of Adams’s violent outburst, plus the pressures in the football-mad community where he lived, figures to cloud the answers that brain testing might provide.“Having the disease can make it more likely for you to be depressed and even kill someone or yourself, but we’ll never know if it was the only or the main cause of this tragic outcome,” said Adam M. Finkel, a quantitative risk assessor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “But the inability to prove that the disease caused any particular outcome should not be used to cast doubt on the broader point, that exposure to repeated head hits is strongly associated with a disease that increases various bad outcomes.”Even if Adams, whose six-year N.F.L. career ended after the 2015 season, is found to have had C.T.E., that may provide only one clue as to why he killed himself and six others. The disease has been linked to a host of symptoms, including aggressive, impulsive behavior and even suicidal thoughts. In many cases, families and friends of players found to have had C.T.E. say that the symptoms were uncharacteristic of the person they knew and that they became more pronounced over time.In this case, Adams’s sister, Lauren Adams, told USA Today that her brother, who was 32, had recently become unusually aggressive.“His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,” she said. “There was unusual behavior.” The disease has also been tied to memory lapses, loss of focus and problems following directions and handling everyday chores. But researchers have found only associations, not causal links, between the disease and the many apparent symptoms.It remains difficult and perhaps impossible to determine a motive after a suicide because so many factors can play a role, including persistent mental distress and drug use. Adams does not appear to have left a note that tried to explain his motives, and such messages are often considered unreliable.While aggression is common in players who are ultimately found to have had C.T.E., rarely have they resorted to murder or suicide. Junior Seau and Dave Duerson are perhaps the best-known football players who killed themselves and were found to have had C.T.E. A far smaller group — including Jovan Belcher, a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker — has killed others before dying by suicide. Still, C.T.E. has grown in prominence as more former players are found to have had the disease, leading to vociferous debate about its role in their deaths.Much is still publicly unknown about what kind of medical treatment Adams may have received, or what relationship Adams had with Dr. Robert Lesslie, one of the six people who were murdered. Lesslie was a prominent local physician who specialized in emergency and occupational medicine.Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., last week that he had learned from law enforcement officials that Dr. Lesslie had seen Adams as a patient. The Sheriff’s Office for York County, S.C., has not confirmed the relationship.In 2017, Adams tried to apply for so-called line-of-duty benefits for injuries he obtained while in the N.F.L., but he had some trouble getting the necessary paperwork from his former teams, according to a disability adviser who worked with Adams. It is unclear how many of Adams’s six former teams provided injury records.A member of the York County Sheriff’s Office guarded the entrance to the home in Rock Hill, S.C., where Dr. Robert Lesslie; his wife, Barbara Lesslie; their two grandchildren; and two other men were fatally shot by Adams before he killed himself.Sam Wolfe/ReutersThose closest to Adams described him as not having come to terms with the end of his N.F.L. career and as someone who had a caretaker role in his family. He was very close to his mother, Phyllis Adams, and had been spending more time in his childhood home with her in recent months, neighbors said. His former agent, Scott Casterline, said Adams had turned down a job offer from him because he did not want to relocate to Texas, where he would be separated from his young son.Adams grew up in Rock Hill, which has given rise to so many N.F.L. players that it is known as Football City U.S.A.Casterline and some of Adams’s friends said Adams held himself to a high standard and never quite got over how his professional career had fizzled because of injuries and other factors.Like some other players, Adams focused so much of his early years honing his craft to get to the N.F.L. that he may have been at a loss over what to do next.“It always starts and ends with expectations,” said Seth Abrutyn, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia who studies the intersection of youth suicide and mental health. “If you are the main caretaker, or at least believe you are, the expectations you face can intensify. They are invisible pressures that exert real force on us.”Adams’s access to guns could have also been a factor in the tragedy. States with higher suicide rates tend to have higher gun ownership rates, research has shown. The average gun ownership rate in South Carolina was 43 percent in 2016, according to a recent Rand Corporation study, well above the average of 32 percent for all states.Police said Adams used two guns in the shootings last week, a .45-caliber and a 9 mm. He was arrested in 2016 in North Carolina and charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor.“What drives the overall suicide rate in the U.S. is gun ownership in the home,” said Matthew Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University, who has studied the intersection of guns and suicide. “It’s much easier to die when you can reach for a gun than when you can’t.”This and other factors may have fueled Adams’s fatal actions, Abrutyn said. Untangling them to find a clear pattern of behavior may never be possible.“It’s easy to have a monocausal explanation because it allows us to sleep better at night,” he said. “When we look our own lives, we know that that’s not true.” More

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      What Led Phillip Adams, Former N.F.L. Player, to a Shooting Spree?

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      A small city that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is grappling with the shooting deaths of members of a prominent local family by Phillip Adams who, many say, had been adrift after his N.F.L. career ended.He struggled to find work. His last-ditch chance to make an N.F.L. team fizzled. He had a child to support and little apparent direction in a life freighted with high expectations. His behavior was increasingly erratic. Then on Wednesday, for reasons no one yet knows for sure, Phillip Adams, a former N.F.L. cornerback, went to the Rock Hill, S.C., home of a prominent doctor and shot everybody he saw before fatally turning the gun on himself.Now, the football-loving community of 65,000 that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is struggling to contend with Adams’s suddenly violent turn and its aftermath.Before he killed five people, including two children, and critically wounded a sixth person, Adams, 32, who shot and killed himself several hours after his rampage, had seemed adrift since he last played N.F.L. football almost six years ago, friends and associates said. He remained close to home, caring for his mother, Phyllis, a former high school teacher who became a paraplegic after a car accident a decade ago.But for all the pressures on Adams — and family members are openly questioning whether football damaged his brain — the many people who rooted for him throughout his career are grappling with the loss of Dr. Robert Lesslie and his family at the hands of a local son.“He was the role model that all coaches hoped they could coach,” said Jim Montgomery, who coached Adams in football at Rock Hill High School, the alma mater of numerous N.F.L. players. Montgomery said he spent most of Thursday answering phone calls through tears.The authorities said that Adams fatally shot Dr. Lesslie; his wife, Barbara; and two of their grandchildren, Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5. James Lewis, 38, had been working on their home when he was killed, and a sixth victim, Robert Shook, is in critical condition.The police have yet to explain why Adams, who was described by friends as “chill” and almost reclusive, singled out the doctor, or whether the two men had any relationship.But Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told Charlotte’s WBTV Thursday that he had learned from law enforcement officials that Dr. Lesslie had seen Adams as a patient. Sheriff officials would not confirm the relationship.“He was treating him and stopped giving him medicine and that’s what triggered the killings from what I understand,” said Norman, whose district encompasses Rock Hill.Members of the Adams family have their own theories. They wonder whether football may have damaged his brain in the same way that has led other players to turn violent and, in a few cases, take their own lives.On Thursday, Alonzo Adams, Phillip’s father, told WCNC, a Charlotte television station, “I think the football messed him up.” His sister, Lauren Adams, told USA Today that he had recently become uncharacteristically aggressive.“His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,” she said. “There was unusual behavior.”Adams’s brain will be studied to determine whether he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head, according to Sabrina Gast, the coroner in York County. It can take months to receive a diagnosis for the disease, which has been linked to mood disorders, memory problems, impulsive behavior and other issues, and has been found in hundreds of former football players.Former coaches, colleagues, neighbors and associates who knew Adams described him in interviews as a hard-working athlete who never advanced beyond journeyman status in the N.F.L., but who remained a quiet, helpful presence in town.“In 43 years, if you would’ve told me that this would have happened with Phillip Adams, I would’ve put him in the last five of the thousands of kids I coached,” Montgomery said on Thursday. “It’s just a sad day.”Duane Belue, a longtime friend and neighbor of the Adams family, said Phillip was close to his mother. Though Phillip had bought a new truck, he did not appear to overspend, and he stayed with his parents for extended periods. Within the last year, the Belues said they noticed that Phillip’s behavior had changed. He was less approachable and would pace outside aimlessly.“We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue said. “You can’t judge somebody that far away, but he was always real friendly before then.”A star player in high school and in college at South Carolina State, Adams was picked by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the 2010 N.F.L. draft. He sustained a severe ankle injury his rookie season that may have derailed his career.“The bone went through the skin,” said Scott Casterline, Adams’s former agent. “Luckily, he had a good surgeon who helped him. But when a team sees a devastating injury like that, they move on.”After the 49ers released him, Adams bounced around the league with stops in New England, Seattle, Oakland (where he sustained two concussions), the Jets and Atlanta.He had one more shot at landing a roster spot, according to Casterline. During training camp in 2016, the Colts called and asked Adams to get to Indianapolis to participate in practice the following day. Casterline urged his client to jump on the next flight, but Adams — who was always gung ho for football — was suddenly hesitant.“He made it to the Charlotte airport, but the flight had left already,” Casterline said. “I could tell his head was not in it. He’d given up on it.”Casterline described Adams as a loner, not one to go to clubs or drink alcohol. He also hinted at financial troubles. Adams earned $3.6 million during his career and, at one point, wanted to invest in a smoothie shop. Casterline, who said he thought of Adams as a son, told his client it was a mistake because many retail businesses fail.Last fall, Adams called his former agent and asked for help finding employment. Casterline said he tried to persuade him to relocate to Dallas and work at one of his companies.“I said to just come out here to Texas,” Casterline said. “He just wouldn’t do it. He had a son. He was a good father and it was difficult with the baby’s mother.”On Wednesday, the day of the shootings, Adams’s father, Alonzo, called Casterline and said he wanted to talk about his son. Casterline did not find the message unusual. Occasionally, Adams’s parents called if they were unable to find Phillip.“I called Alonzo back and left a message, not realizing it had already happened,” Casterline said.In a news conference on Thursday, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said evidence recovered from the home of the Lesslies led them to suspect Adams of the killings. The authorities said they evacuated the Adamses’ home and tried to persuade Phillip to surrender. They found him inside, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.A mourner adjusted items at a memorial outside of Riverview Family Medicine and Urgent Care, where Dr. Robert Lesslie practiced medicine.Sean Rayford/Getty ImagesIt is often difficult to assign motive to cases where a gunman has not left a note or spoken specifically of his or her intent, even more so in cases that end with the gunman’s death.But some of Adams’s friends said he never got over how his N.F.L. career ended. Rather than catching on with one team and landing a big contract worth tens of millions of dollars, he bounced from team to team, often playing for the league minimum salary. The calls for his services stopped coming, a common fate in the N.F.L., because colleges produce dozens of cheaper, healthier replacement players every year.The disappointment of washing out was particularly acute for Adams, friends said, because he came from Rock Hill, which has given rise to so many N.F.L. players that it is known as Football City U.S.A.To Adams, even a six-year career — twice as long as the average — may have been a letdown when compared to those of other local players like Jadeveon Clowney, who was picked first over all in the 2014 draft and is a three-time Pro Bowl selection; tight end Benjamin Watson, who played 13 seasons with the Patriots, Saints and other teams; and Stephon Gilmore, a defensive leader on the Patriots.“We have a saying around here: You could pay $6 on Friday night or you can wait a few years and pay $600 to see the kids around here play,” said Gene Knight, a broadcaster who has covered the city’s sports for decades.Charcandrick West, who played with the Kansas City Chiefs from 2014 to 2018 and shared an agent with Adams, said he and Adams worked out together during a couple of off-seasons. West said Adams was reserved and proud of his Rock Hill roots.“I never saw him get mad at anyone,” West said. “He was all about his business, washing and folding his clothes, real neat.”West added: “I feel like every athlete tries to keep high expectations. When you’re from Rock Hill, such a great football town, he didn’t want to be known as the guy who bounced around.”Neighbors noticed that Adams’s behavior had changed in the past year. He was less friendly and would pace outside his Rock Hill, S.C., home. “We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue, a neighbor, said.Sam Wolfe/ReutersCasterline, who has worked as an N.F.L. agent for decades, also said Adams had trouble grasping why he didn’t catch on with a team.“Sometimes, these decisions are political,” Casterline said of teams’ cutting players. “Someone who’s drafted in the first round is going to get the most opportunities. That weighed on him a lot. The Patriots cut him three times in one season. They needed him, they didn’t, they’d cut him and re-sign him. It’s good for the paycheck, but not for the psyche.”Knight, the local sports broadcaster, remembered Adams as “a fierce competitor on the field, but he was a gentleman off the field all the times I encountered him.”Knight had also been treated once by Dr. Lesslie, a popular and well-known physician in Rock Hill, when he struggled with food poisoning. He said Dr. Lesslie worked on him at 2 a.m., easing his symptoms with intravenous therapy.“It’s not two people whose paths I thought would cross in this manner,” he said. “And I think that’s what a lot of people are wrestling with in the whole craziness of this situation.”John Jeter More