BOSTON — Five months removed from catching a Tom Brady touchdown pass in the Super Bowl, and less than six weeks from finalizing a $40 million contract extension with the New England Patriots, Aaron Hernandez and his friend Alexander Bradley stood in a garage in Manchester, Conn.It was about 10 p.m. on Sunday, July 15, 2012, and Hernandez wanted to go up to Boston and hit a nightclub. The hour and a half-plus drive meant nothing. Boston was where Hernandez was a star, the big city where they could get ushered into VIP sections and have patrons, particularly women, fawn over him.
Hernandez popped the hood of a Toyota 4Runner a Rhode Island dealer loaned him for free. He slipped a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson into a secret cylinder installed near the engine block. It was a way to conceal a gun, particularly if pulled over by police. It was something out of “The Wire.” The purpose was unclear.
Hernandez had no criminal record, no gang ties and was involved in no outside criminal activities. Growing up in Bristol, Conn., he was raised in a two family home in a town with little to no significant gang activity or even violent crime.
He was, by 2012, a 22-year-old NFL star, headed into a lucrative third season with an again Super Bowl contender. He could have carried a legal weapon in the vehicle. Bradley was a convicted cocaine dealer but was nothing more than a ride along that night. The hidden gun cylinder felt mostly like a guy trying to live a life out of the movies.
This is the beginning of the story Suffolk County prosecutors in Boston will tell to a jury of 12 in the latest murder trial of Aaron Hernandez. It begins Wednesday morning in courtroom 906.
The prosecution’s story will continue like this:
Weapon secured, the hood was dropped and Hernandez and Bradley headed to Boston’s Theatre District. There, inside the Cure Nightclub, Hernandez bumped, literally, into a Cape Verdean immigrant named Daniel de Abreu. Some of Hernandez’s drink was spilled. Abreu, 29, had been a police officer in Cape Verde but was working as a janitor in Boston. He didn’t know Hernandez or much about football. He smiled but didn’t apologize. Hernandez grew enraged. He told Bradley he felt Abreu was “trying him.”
Later, after hitting a couple more clubs, Hernandez was still angry. He and Bradley headed to the Toyota as closing time neared and Hernandez retrieved the weapon from under the hood. They then got in the SUV and circled around the block, looking for Abreu and his party. The hunt was successful, Hernandez spotting them after they left Cure. He ran a nearby red light so he could catch them in pursuit.
The borrowed 2003 BMW Abreu was driving sat innocently at a stoplight down the street where, the prosecution’s story will continue, Hernandez pulled up alongside, lowered a window and began firing.
He hit Abreu, 29 in the chest, killing him. He hit passenger Safiro Furtado, 28, another Cape Verdean-born janitor, in the head, killing him as well. Three more shots went into the backseat, where three stunned and terrified passengers sat. Aquilino Freire was struck twice, in his arms, but survived. Two others barreled out the other door and fled on foot.
Hernandez, out of bullets, kept squeezing the trigger anyway. Soon he slipped onto the Mass Pike and headed back to Connecticut. Detectives in Boston arrived on a scene with few clues and no easy explanation. No one could figure out why the incident had occurred. The idea it might be the Patriots’ star tight end never entered anyone’s mind. Its randomness led to initial suspicions it was just another stupid gang killing, a too frequent occurrence in the city.
― nomar, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 02:16 (seven years ago) link