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The tattoo, of a lit fuse, is something Jeff Pilon will never forget.

“It started,” recalled the nine-year Calgary Stampeders’ O-lineman, “on the top his hand, rolled all the way up his arm, wrapping around and around, and at the end of the fuse was this big, giant bomb on the back of his shoulder.

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“He sat about three stalls down from me in the room. So one day I asked him: ‘What the hell’s that for?’

“And he said: ‘When I was in university, people said I was a ticking time bomb, so I figured: ‘OK, —- it, I’m going to be a ticking time bomb.'”

Wednesday, that bomb went off for the last time.

Lawrence Phillips was found dead in his cell at Kern Valley State Prison, a Level IV Maximum Security institution located in Delano, Calif.

Only 40, he was facing a possible death penalty in the alleged murder of former cellmate Damion Soward on April 11th.

A short life, fraught with incarceration, violence, punctuated with periodic bursts of brilliance between the white lines of a football field.