The posthumous brain examination of Phillip Adams, a 32-year-old retired journeyman N.F.L. player who shot and killed six people in April, revealed that he had an “unusually severe” form of C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repeated hits to the head.
Dr. Anne McKie, director of the C.T.E. Center at Boston University, said an examination of Adams’s brain showed Stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an abnormally severe diagnosis for a person in his 30s. McKie added that Adams’s pathology, where significant density was found in both frontal lobes, most nearly resembled that of Aaron Hernandez, a former New England Patriots tight end who was 27 when he died by suicide after being convicted of a 2015 murder.