Aaron Hernandez, already in prison in connection with a 2013 homicide, has been indicted in connection with the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012, multiple Boston-area media outlets reported Thursday. A Suffolk County grand jury returned an indictment on two counts of first-degree murder in the unsolved case.
Hernandez, a former New England Patriot, has been indicted in connection with the deaths of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, who were killed in a driveby shootout on a Boston street on July 16, 2012.
Both Hernandez and the victims were present at the Boston nightclub Cure at the same time, according to court documents. The victims and Hernandez left the club at roughly the same time. Security cameras show Hernandez and an associate driving a Toyota 4Runner out of a nearby garage; Hernandez was behind the wheel.
Shortly afterward, witnesses reported seeing an SUV with Rhode Island license plates stop next to the victims' car at a stoplight. Two witnesses indicated that someone inside the SUV opened fire on the victims' car, firing six shots.
Neither Abreu nor Furtado knew Hernandez, according to an eyewitness.
"They just came up and started firing for no reason at all," the alleged eyewitness said last year. "We never had any trouble. We were not those kind of people. We were just having fun. … Things happened so fast. I was trying to defend myself. They were shooting everywhere inside the car, front to back. They just came to kill. That's it."
“For us, this case was not about Aaron Hernandez," said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. "This case was about two victims, who were stalked, ambushed, and senselessly murdered on the streets of the city they called home."
Hernandez will be arraigned on these new charges in the next week. Suffolk County officials, citing both a respect for the other murder case pending against Hernandez as well as Hernandez's own rights, declined to give significant specifics on this particular case until the arraignment.
According to David Frank, managing editor of Massachusetts Law Weekly, Hernandez is expected to enter a not guilty plea to the new indictment in Suffolk Superior Court. "It was hardly a secret that grand jury in Suffolk has been investigating Hernandez for the Boston homicide that resulted in new indictments," Frank wrote on Twitter. Hernandez played the entire 2012 season after the deaths of Abreu and Furtado.
Hernandez is also awaiting trial in connection with the June 2013 death of Odin Lloyd. Hernandez has been charged with first-degree murder in the execution-style murder of Lloyd. Law enforcement sources indicated that Hernandez was allegedly concerned that Lloyd was going to talk about his knowledge of what happened in the 2012 murders. Most recently, Hernandez was indicted in connection with a jailhouse fight in February.
