Aaron Hernandez double murder trial underway
By Bianca Buono
bbuono@abc6.com
@BBuonoABC6
The double murder trial of former football star Aaron Hernandez is officially underway. The trial comes nearly five years after two men were gunned down outside a club in Boston.
"A hail of gunfire fired by one man. One man who set upon those two victims,” said Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan while pointing at Hernandez in Suffolk Superior Court.
Haggan chronicled the night in July of 2012 when the murders happened. He says Hernandez shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel de Abreu and 28-year-old Safiro Furtado all over a spilled drink at a Boston nightclub called Cure.
"It wasn’t so much the fact that Daniel de Abreu just bumped into him and spilled his drink. You’re going to learn that Daniel de Abreu turned to him afterwards and smiled,” said Haggan.
Hours after that alleged incident, Haggan says Hernandez was still agitated so he tracked down the two men in the parking lot and killed them.
"The evidence will show that at that point, the defendant fired that gun five times,” Haggan said.
Hernandez’s attorney, Jose Baez, tells a different story. He says there was no spilled drink. Instead, a drug deal went south because of Hernandez’s friend Alexander Bradley.
"Alexander Bradley is not just a drug dealer. He’s a legitimate drug trafficker. Dealing drugs is a violent, dangerous business,” said Baez.
Bradley will testify against Hernandez during this trial, but Baez says he’s the one who fired the deadly shots, not his client.
"What he will testify up here to is anyone’s guess,” Baez said.
Baez is the Florida attorney who represented Casey Anthony. He acquitted her when she was on trial for killing her daughter.
Once opening arguments concluded, the prosecution began to call witnesses. Sofia Teixeira Furtado, Safiro Furtado’s older sister, was called first. Next, Neusa Abreu, Daniel de Abreu’s sister. Both were emotional as they were asked to identify photographs of their brothers and describe the night they were murdered.
Sean McCann, who parked his car near the crime scene that night, was also called to the stand.
The double murder trial will continue Thursday morning and the judge says it’s scheduled to last four to six weeks.
© WLNE-TV 2017
