Former National Football League running back Lawrence Phillips was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder Sunday after he allegedly drove a stolen car into a throng of boys with whom he had just played pickup football at Exposition Park in Los Angeles, police said.

Phillips, who has a decade-long history of arrests for violence and traffic violations, apparently was angered when he couldn't find his belongings minutes after the game ended and accused the youths of stealing from him, according to the mother of one of the victims.

None of the victims' injuries were life-threatening, police said.

Phillips, who spent his teens in a West Covina group home, first attracted national attention for violent behavior when he was a star player at Nebraska. In 1995, he was charged with trespassing and assault for an attack on a college girlfriend, who said he threatened to shoot her in the kneecaps and elbows. The university provided her with 24-hour protection. Phillips pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year of probation.

Before Sunday's incident, Phillips' most recent run-in with authorities came when San Diego police said that he had choked a 28-year-old girlfriend Aug. 2 at her home in the Mission Valley area. A second attack allegedly took place 11 days later when Phillips confronted the woman at a party.

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Despite his troubles with the law, Phillips received many opportunities over the years to start fresh. After pleading no contest in the attack on his college girlfriend, he was drafted the following year by the St. Louis Rams as a first-round pick and No. 6 overall. That same year, he was arrested for drunk driving, a parole violation that carried a 23-day jail sentence.

The Rams released Phillips in 1997 for insubordination. He was signed briefly by the Miami Dolphins, but was dumped again after a woman claimed that he struck her after she refused to dance with him at a nightclub. Phillips pleaded guilty to battery and was placed on six months' probation.

After being signed and then cut by the San Francisco 49ers, Phillips was charged in May 2000 with attacking a girlfriend in Beverly Hills. That December, he was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading no contest to felony charges of beating the woman and making a terrorist threat. He also was given three years' probation and ordered to take anger-management training.

Phillips briefly found football success in Canada — where he had to get special permission to work because of his criminal record in the U.S. — but was dropped by two teams for behavioral problems, despite agreeing to additional anger-management counseling, according to news accounts.

In late 2003, Phillips was back in criminal court, charged in Quebec with sexual assault, assault, and uttering threats, apparently against another girlfriend.