On April 7th of this year, former NFL player Phillip Adams shot and killed six innocent people and then took his own life.
It was a horrifying event, one that shook all who heard it.
According to The New York Times, officials haven’t found a rationale or connection between Adams and his victims, identified as physician Robert Lesslie; his wife, Barbara; two of their grandchildren, Adah and Noah Lesslie; and two HVAC technicians, James Lewis and Robert Shook, who were working at the Lesslie home on that fateful day.
Yet something had to incite Adams to murder this group.
Today we learned of at least one contributing factor to this horrific incident.
According to Dr. Ann McKee, who directs the CTE Center at Boston University, Phillip Adams suffered from stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, better known as CTE.
“Severe frontal lobe pathology might have contributed to Adams’s behavioral abnormalities, in addition to physical, psychiatric and psychosocial factors,” said Dr. McKee, who examined Adams’ brain after his death. “Theoretically, the combination of poor impulse control, paranoia, poor decision-making, emotional volatility, rage and violent tendencies caused by frontal lobe damage could converge to lower an individual’s threshold for homicidal acts — yet such behaviors are usually multifactorial.”
CTE, the degenerative brain disease linked to head trauma and concussions, includes symptoms such as memory loss, depression and violent mood swings. CTE has four stages, the most severe being stage 4, which is associated with dementia.
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