Friend: Belcher Suffered ‘Memory Loss’

Linebacker Jovan Belcher, who police say killed his girlfriend before shooting himself in the parking lot of Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, struggled with alcohol and prescription-drug troubles, according to a friend who spoke with sports website Deadspin. The player was “dazed and was suffering from short-term memory loss,” the friend said of Belcher after a mid-November game against the Bengals. Belcher and his girlfriend were both “very young,” the friend told Deadspin, and the promising NFL player had gotten into the habit of drinking “on a nightly basis.”