Trial details brutal slays
BOSTON — A Massachusetts prosecutor fingered former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez as the murderer of two Cape Verdean immigrants “in a hail of gunfire” during opening statements of Hernandez’s double homicide trial on Wednesday.
“The defendant had deadly accuracy that night,” assistant district attorney Patrick Haggan said in room No. 906 of the Suffolk County (Mass.) Courthouse.
Hernandez, 27, is already serving a life sentence in prison after previously being convicted of killing Odin Lloyd, a landscaper from St. Croix, in 2015, but Suffolk County prosecutors are pursuing the double homicide case as the previous conviction makes its way through the appeals process.
Hernandez has been charged with eight crimes in the current case, most notably first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, who did not know Hernandez prior to a chance encounter at Cure Lounge, a Boston nightclub. Their paths crossed in the early morning hours of July 16, 2012, a Monday.
Haggan asserted that de Abreu was dancing when he bumped into Hernandez and spilled Hernandez’s drink. Hernandez grew angry and believed that he was being tested by club goers on his nights out, per Haggan. Hernandez, who was accompanied by Alexander Bradley, a drug dealer and close friend, circled the club’s block with Hernandez as he waited for de Abreu, Furtado and the three other men who made up their party at the club. The defendant then ambushed them at a traffic light.
Haggan detailed the night’s activities as recorded on soundless surveillance video and comments that were relayed to him by Bradley. Haggan’s descriptions of the murder scene included telling of the five shots that Hernandez fired from a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver into the 2003 BMW that de Abreu and Furtado were riding in. Two bullets entered Furtado’s head; one lodged in his brain. Two shots hit de Abreu in the chest. Both men died that morning. Hernandez allegedly told Bradley, his righthand man and driver at the time, that he struck his targets.
“I got one in the head, one in the chest,” Hernandez said, according to Haggan.
Members of the victims’ family sobbed openly as Haggan detailed the scene in court. One woman departed the courtroom; others dabbed their eyes with tissues.
Hernandez’s defense attorney, Jose Baez, countered that prosecutors made “a deal with the devil” to elicit Bradley’s testimony in order to tag “the fallen Patriot” with the murder raps. Baez also directed the jurors to consider Bradley’s criminal background when he testifies. Baez called the commonwealth’s case “ridiculous.”
“His stories will fluctuate depending on the mood of the day,” Baez said of Bradley.