Expressway Mishap Kills Chargers’ Griggs : Pro football: Linebacker’s speeding car slams into sign pole on Florida Turnpike ramp.

David Griggs, a starting linebacker last season for the AFC champion San Diego Chargers, died when his speeding car slid off an expressway ramp and slammed into a large sign pole.

Griggs, 28, apparently lost control of the car late Monday on a ramp linking Florida’s Turnpike with three other roads west of Fort Lauderdale. The car traveled across another ramp and grassy median before slamming into the pole, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

Griggs was taken to Broward General Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

“It just hasn’t sunk in yet,” Charger General Manager Bobby Beathard said Tuesday. “I don’t know if it will until we’re all together and he’s not there.”

Griggs was the only person in the car, which was traveling substantially faster than the 30-m.p.h. speed limit, the highway patrol said. There was no evidence of drug or alcohol use, an investigating trooper said.

The tragedy was the third to hit the Chargers this year. Quarterback coach Dwain Painter’s ex-wife killed herself hours after San Diego won the AFC championship game in January. Less than three weeks later, Painter’s daughter was swept to her death by a wave as she scattered her mother’s ashes along a rocky ocean coast.

Griggs received his AFC championship ring last week during a ceremony in San Diego. He signed with the Chargers as an unrestricted free agent in March 1994 after spending five seasons with the Miami Dolphins.

In the Chargers’ Super Bowl loss to San Francisco last January, Griggs made three solo tackles and assisted on two others.

“We thought we were a better team because of David,” Beathard said. “I think that he had that kind of heart and pride that he was always striving to get better. I think there had been a noticeable improvement even since last football season.”

Griggs, a native of Camden, N.J., who grew up in Pennsauken, N.J., was a three-year starter at the University of Virginia. He was a seventh-round draft choice by the New Orleans Saints in 1989.

He is survived by his wife, Amy, and a one-year-old daughter, Jasmine.