Warrant links Aaron Hernandez to Boston shooting
BRISTOL, Conn. — Police believe former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez was in an SUV when someone inside shot two people to death in Boston in 2012, according to a search warrant filed in Connecticut.
The warrant does not indicate who investigators believe pulled the trigger or suggest a motive in the shooting of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado in Boston’s South End. No charges have been filed in the case. An attorney for Hernandez did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Hernandez came under scrutiny in the shooting following his arrest in the slaying of Odin Lloyd, a semiprofessional football player whose body was found June 17 near Hernandez’s North Attleborough, Mass., home. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to murder in that case.
In searching a home of Hernandez’s uncle in Bristol, Conn., police found the SUV wanted in the 2012 shooting in Boston.
The new search warrant, first reported by The Hartford Courant, was filed in Bristol Superior Court. It sought recordings of phone calls made by a Hernandez associate, Alexander Bradley, while Bradley was jailed in Hartford for failing to appear before a Massachusetts grand jury investigating the 2012 shooting.
Bradley has alleged in a pending lawsuit in Florida that Hernandez shot him in the face after they argued outside a Miami club in February 2013.
The search warrant filed by Bristol police provides some of the first details of Hernandez’s alleged link to the Boston shooting.
Surveillance camera recordings showed Hernandez and Bradley going into the Boston nightclub Cure at about 12:30 a.m. on July 16, 2012, shortly after the shooting victims went into the club, according to the warrant. Video footage shows Hernandez and Bradley leaving the club about 10 minutes later and Hernandez then driving a Toyota 4Runner SUV out of a parking garage just after 1:15 a.m., police said.
The footage shows the victims leaving the club at about 2:10 a.m., and Hernandez’s SUV passing by them twice as they walked to a parking garage to get their car, the warrant says.
A third man who was shot in the car but survived, Aquilino Freire, told police an SUV pulled up next to them while they were stopped at a traffic light, and he saw someone in the SUV’s back seat laughing, the warrant says. Then, several gunshots were fired from the rear passenger seat into the car, Freire told police.