Ex NFL player Lawrence Phillips accused of murdering his cell mate in a California prison.
A California coroner has ruled that the death of a former NFL player’s prison cellmate was a homicide by strangulation, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
Lawrence Phillips, 39, was suspected in the death of 37-year-old Damion Soward, who was found unresponsive in their cell on Saturday and died at a local hospital the next day, officials at the Kern Valley State Prison said on Monday.
The Times reported on Wednesday that the Kern County coroner’s office said Soward died of neck compression asphyxia, and that his death was a homicide.
Representatives for the coroner’s office could not be immediately reached.
Soward was serving a sentence of 82 years to life for first-degree murder, prison officials said. The Los Angeles Times reported that Soward was a gang member who was convicted of executing a member of a rival gang.
Phillips played for three NFL teams over four years in the 1990s, ending his career with the San Francisco 49ers in 1999.
Officials said Phillips entered the prison in the central California city of Delano in October 2008 and was serving a sentence of 31 years and four months for domestic violence, false imprisonment and vehicle theft.
Local media said at the time the charges stemmed from two instances where he choked his girlfriend, including once where she lost consciousness.
Phillips had also been convicted of driving his car into three teenagers after a pickup football game in an unrelated case, according to local media.
Prison officials said Phillips was placed in a separate unit pending the outcome of their investigation. It said prison officials
there were also investigating a separate case involving another inmate over the death of another cellmate.
CJNG aka Jalisco New Cartel becoming Mexico’s fastest growing drug cartel.
The town still bears the scars from the unprecedented offensive launched by a powerful Mexican drug cartel against government forces: bullet-pocked buildings and blood stains on the street.
The March 19 ambush that killed five federal gendarmerie officers, three gang suspects and three bystanders in Ocotlan signaled the start of a conflict between the authorities and the Jalisco New Generation Drug Cartel.
The well-armed gang took its operation to a new level on April 6 when it surprised a Jalisco state police convoy, gunning down 15 officers in the deadliest single day for Mexico’s security forces in years of a bloody drug war.
The western state of Jalisco is known as the birthplace of tequila, mariachis and the country’s most popular football team, the Chivas of Guadalajara.
But now it is also known as the home of the New Generation, a rising power of Mexico’s underworld that had been overshadowed until now by other groups such as the Sinaloa, Zetas, Gulf and Knights Templar cartels.
Officials say the Jalisco cartel has grown so powerful that it has produced its own assault rifles in makeshift gun assembly shops. The gang has even recruited military deserters, including foreign ones.
“They were waiting for the moment when they felt strong to start this escalation,” Luis Carlos Najera, the chief prosecutor of Jalisco state, told AFP.
Last year, authorities discovered a clandestine workshop with sophisticated equipment to build M16 and R15 rifles. Some of the homemade weapons were found following the recent attacks.
The cartel has drawn the attention of the US government, which has funded Mexico’s battle against drug cartels by providing equipment, training and intelligence.
Last week, the US Treasury Department slapped financial sanctions against the New Generation and its shadowy boss, Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho,” as well as its allies, the Los Cuinis cartel.
The gang has expanded beyond Jalisco into neighboring Michoacan and Colima while forging ties with other criminal organizations in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia, according to the US Treasury.
– 138 bullet holes –
The growing power of the cartel is evident in the destruction it has left behind in Ocotlan, near Mexico’s second biggest city, Guadalajara.
“My house was hit by 138 bullets,” said an Ocotlan resident who asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns.
The woman said she and her husband laid on the floor during the March 19 shootout, which lasted nearly two hours.
That night, some 40 gunmen waited inside 12 pick-up trucks for the arrival of the convoy carrying the gendarmerie, a new elite police force launched last year by President Enrique Pena Nieto.
The gangsters fired from several sides and rooftops, according to local residents. Soldiers rushed to the scene and burst into homes to find the shooters.
People spent the night without light or telephone service because utility poles were hit in the firefight.
Two weeks later, a new ambush was launched against the state police convoy, this time on a rural, curvy road in a mountain between Guadalajara and the Pacific resort town of Puerto Vallarta.
The gang parked cars on the road to slow the arrival of reinforcements as they gunned down 15 officers.
The assailants used a Barrett anti-tank rifles and grenades against the convoy, said Jalisco security commissioner Francisco Alejandro Solorio.
Retired Police Commissioner Owen Ellington says the nation is fortunate that the security forces were able to repel the attack on the state by the Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke led Shower Posse back in 2010.
Ellington, who was testifying before the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry this morning, again expressed regret at the loss of lives during the three-day police-military operations but insisted that the security forces were “left with no choice.”
“It was an attack on the state and if they (Shower Posse) had succeeded in repelling the security forces it’s anybody’s guess where Coke’s office would be today,” he said in response to questions from one of the commissioners Professor Anthony Harriott.
He painted a picture of a Shower Posse that, in 2010, was highly organised and deadly.
“They are other gangs that can produce violence but not on the level of the Presidential Click”, he said in reference to one of the many moniker for Coke’s gang.
The retired top cop said intelligence at the time showed that Coke had long term ambition to expand his power and influence across the entire island.
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