Testimony in the Aaron Hernandez double murder trial will resume Friday and Judge Jeffrey Locke previously indicated the Commonwealth may finally rest its case in chief today.
Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez took the stand on Thursday in the double murder trial of her fiancée, accused of killing two men outside a Boston nightclub in 2012.
Prosecutors asked Jenkins-Hernandez about a seventeen-second phone call from Aaron Hernandez at 2:37 a.m. on the night of the July 2012 murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safir Furtado outside a Boston nightclub. Prosecutors say the men enraged Hernandez when they spilled a drink on him and laughed at him. This allegedly caused Hernandez to get a gun and shoot into the victims’ BMW, killing 2 and injuring a third man.
The prosecution claims the phone call was made around the time of the murder, but says Jenkins-Hernandez claims to have no memory of receiving the phone call.
She also testified about finding a gun in the home she shared with Hernandez and then confronting him about it in his “Man Cave.” She described giving him a “look” to indicate she was upset and recalled his reaction as somewhat rattled. However, she said she had no experience with guns and could not describe its color or even if was a revolver or a pistol.
Star witness Alexander “Sherrod” Bradley, a former friend to Hernandez, testified earlier in the case that he was driving the SUV when Hernandez fired the shots that killed the two men. Bradley was later shot in the face in Florida. Through Bradley originally claimed not to know who shot him and refused to cooperate with police, he later said it was Hernandez who pulled the trigger and filed a civil lawsuit. Prosecutors claim Hernandez was trying to silence his former friend about the 2012 killings.
Defense attorneys contend Bradley committed the 2012 murders as part of drug deal gone bad and a same thing occurred in the 2013 shooting. He is currently serving a sentence for another nightclub shooting in Hartford in 2014 and testified against Hernandez under a grant of immunity.
Jenkins-Hernandez testified that she found out “from another source” that Bradley had been shot and said “she may have” spoken to Hernandez about it, but couldn’t recall. She also testified that she never asked why Bradley no longer came around the house after the shooting in 2013.
At one point in the day, Jenkins-Hernandez seemingly got a bit frustrated with prosecutors, saying,”I knew that Aaron and Sherrod were together in Florida. I was not there to know if Aaron [Hernandez] was with him [Bradley] the night when whatever happened, so that was my general understanding and what I conveyed to you.”
When asked about prior testimony she made indicating she may know more than she is currently saying, she responded, “I learned to keep my mouth shut in certain situations.”
Defense attorneys got Jenkins-Hernandez to admit on cross-examination that she believed Bradley was “bad news” and that she was glad he no longer hung around Hernandez after the 2013 incident.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to all counts related to the 2012 shootings.
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[image via screengrab]
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