CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) Four years ago, Tyrone Phillips had a golden life.
He was the star senior on Marshall University's basketball team and perhaps
headed for the pros.

Now, a quadriplegic sentenced today to 10 years in prison for conspiring to
sell cocaine, Phillips says those memories are all he has.

``I feel like you control your own destiny and accidents do happen. I had a
pretty good life, and my life spiraled downward and now my life is in the
hands of others,'' said Phillips, 25.

``Previous to that, I had a ball. I don't regret anything. I had a good time.
I met a lot of people and got a lifetime of memories which pretty much keeps
me going.''

At his sentencing hearing, a federal judge denied Phillips' request to return
home to North Carolina and report to prison at a later date. He was ordered
to report to a medical correctional facility in Lexington, Ky.

Phillips' life was always tough. His parents divorced when he was in junior
high school and he moved in with his aunt, May Elders, in Compton, Calif., a
rough neighborhood surrounded by drugs and gangs.

She was strict with him through high school. She says he had to come to West
Virginia to find trouble.

``If I had been around I'm sure it wouldn't have happened. But he was so far
away from me,'' said Elders, now 72. ``I can't understand why somebody that's
as nice as he is could have such horrible, terrible luck.''

Phillips became a starting forward in 1990 as a sophomore at Marshall and
averaged 22 points.

``Tyrone was a very talented person on and off the court,'' said assistant
coach Donnie Jones, now an assistant at Florida. ``I thought his best days
were ahead of him if he could have just done the right thing.''

But some saw Phillips' downfall coming.

``He was a real `head case' in a lot of ways. He had a trail of troubles,''
said Rick McCann, a sports writer for The HeraldDispatch in Huntington,
W.Va. ``He's just a guy who had tons of potential, but he just never seemed
to reach it. He kind of went his own way a lot of times. He was not really a
team type of guy.''

In the spring of his senior year, Phillips dropped out of college to play in
a summer league in Canada. He then played four months in a professional
league in France, broke his wrist, and returned to Huntington.

Many of his teammates had graduated. He said he began hanging out with a new
crowd, a drugdealing crowd.

``I hung out with everybody who wanted to have a good time,'' he said. ``I
never even thought about it.''

In February 1994, Phillips said one of those friends agreed to loan him $300
to attend his grandmother's funeral.

In Charleston to pick up the cash, Phillips said he got between his friend, a
known drug dealer, and a gunman who wanted money from the dealer. Phillips
was shot four times in the legs and lower torso.

He recovered and was offered another chance to play in France in August 1994.
He played two months before learning his girlfriend, Katrina Wynes, was
pregnant in WinstonSalem, N.C. He used $40,000 in basketball money to buy a
house in WinstonSalem for his family.

In January 1995, he returned to Marshall to finish his criminal justice
degree, driving home on the weekends to be with Wynes and their daughter,
Tyra. But he was still hanging out with his drugdealing friends.

Phillips was headed to New York in hopes of signing another basketball
contract on Feb. 19, 1995, when his truck struck a tree near the Piedmont
Triad Airport in Greensboro, N.C. He was paralyzed, and his passenger, Linda
S. Thompson, was killed.

Phillips was in the hospital for three months and underwent about 10
operations to ease pressure in his brain and remove glass from his head.

A federal grand jury indicted him for conspiracy to sell cocaine in October
1996 after prosecutors said Phillips gave his father and another man a list
of drug clients from his hospital bed. They said Phillips authorized deals,
made introductions and ordered debt collections.

``I was a target for drugs,'' he said. ``When they saw I had money, the first
thing they assumed was it was drug money. They never found anything.''

Phillips was convicted in March in U.S. District Court in Huntington on two
counts of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and three counts of having his
father and others distribute cocaine. He was released on bond.

Phillips' father, Edward Phillips, 48, was sentenced to nine years in prison
last year after pleading guilty to selling cocaine. The elder Phillips
testified against his son on a plea bargain.

The younger Phillips admitted being in the drug business, but denied any
involvement following his accident, said assistant U.S. attorney Ray Shepard.

``If he can commit a crime in his condition, and he did so, then he should
have to answer for it,'' Shepard said.

Phillips testified he had seen cocaine once in his life.

``It's pretty amazing. It isn't over. After I got paralyzed I didn't think
anything else could happen,'' he said. ``I still enjoy life. I still have my
memories.''

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