Ex-NFL Player Pleads Not Guilty to Driving Stolen Car Into Youths

Former NFL running back Lawrence L. Phillips pleaded not guilty Tuesday to multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon and child abuse stemming from an incident Sunday in which he is accused of driving a stolen vehicle into a group of young men with whom he had just played pickup football.

Phillips, 30, faces a maximum prison sentence of 13 years and four months if convicted on all charges. Bail was set at $350,000 and a preliminary hearing scheduled in Los Angeles County Superior Court for Sept. 6. He also is charged with leaving the scene of an accident.

Phillips, who was a star at the University of Nebraska and played for the St. Louis Rams and Miami Dolphins, appeared briefly in the wood-paneled courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, clad in a prison-issue short-sleeved blue shirt and beat-up denim shorts, his hands shackled to his body. He did not speak.

The incident on a grassy field across from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was for Phillips the latest in a decade-long string of arrests on suspicion of traffic violations and assaults.

The original charge of attempted murder was reduced to assault with a deadly weapon, “based on the evidence and what we think we can prove in court,” said Sandi Gibbons, a public information officer for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The deadly weapon, in this case, was the Honda Accord he allegedly drove over a curb onto a field and then into the crowd of youths with whom he had just played touch football. The car had been reported stolen in San Diego.

Myrna Flores, the mother of one of the three youths injured in the incident, said her son Rodney, 15, told her Phillips couldn’t find some of his belongings after playing with the youths, and accused the young men of stealing them.

Rodney Flores told his mother the car struck him, throwing him onto the hood. He and two other youths were treated for cuts and bruises at California Hospital Medical Center.

Phillips, who spent his teens in a West Covina group home, has been arrested at least five times for allegedly assaulting women.

He was wanted in San Diego on felony charges stemming from two alleged attacks this month on a girlfriend, who police say was choked into unconsciousness.

He also was wanted in Los Angeles for allegedly violating conditions of parole after being convicted of making a criminal threat and inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant in a May 2000 incident.