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The former Chiefs defensive tackle seemed prepared for a prosperous life after football. Now he's a man on the run. Date published: 7/25/2006
By RANDY COVITZ
McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS KANSAS CITY, Mo.--When he played for the Kansas City Chiefs, Joe Phillips appeared to be setting up his family and himself for life. He was making good money in the NFL as a defensive tackle. In his spare time, he worked for a local law firm, participated in community causes and even was co-host of a radio show with his wife, Cynthia. They had beautiful, blond children. It was an idyllic life Phillips thought he'd never touch. "If you talked about preparing for life after football," said Lamonte Winston, the Chiefs' director of player development, "Joe had it lined up." But today Joe Phillips is a wanted man. Phillips' smiling visage, the one that flashed across Kansas City television screens in the 1990s, has morphed into a police mug shot--his once-reddish goatee turned to scraggly gray stubble. His face has been posted on a law enforcement Web site under the heading "Have you seen this individual?" Phillips, 43, is a fugitive from justice in Oregon. He has been arrested twice on charges of driving under the influence during the past two years and once for an outstanding bench warrant for failure to comply with the terms of probation stemming from the first DUI in January 2005 in Clackamas County, Ore. He was on the lam--or "on abscond"--from November 2005 until May 2006, when he was arrested in Portland, Ore. He was transferred from a jail in Portland to Clackamas County, but was set free because of jail overcrowding. Two days before his June 20 arraignment, police picked up Phillips on another DUI charge while driving a motorcycle in Lincoln City, Ore. Phillips was released pending a hearing and was to appear in court June 30 in Clackamas County. He never showed. And he's been missing ever since. But how does a man who stands 6 feet 5 inches and weighs 315 pounds disappear? He has no known job, permanent address or phone number. Joe Phillips joined the Chiefs as a free agent in 1992 after playing the previous five seasons with the Chargers. It was a fresh start, for he had found trouble in San Diego, where he joined the club as a replacement player during the 1987 strike.
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