A man who says he witnessed a double homicide allegedly committed by former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez identified the former NFL star in a pretrial hearing as the one who committed the shooting of two men outside a Boston nightclub in July 2012.
Hernandez is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of Odin Lloyd in 2013. He is charged with killing Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu after one of them bumped into him at a Boston nightclub, CBS News reported.
Raychides Sanches, who was in the car with the two men who were shot, testified that Hernandez pulled up next to their car and said, “What’s up Negro,” then began shooting into the car. When asked to describe the shooter, he pointed to Hernandez and identified him as the shooter.
Hernandez’s defense attorneys pointed out that Sanches couldn’t give a good description of the vehicle the shooter pulled up in, and Sanches replied that everything happened fast and that “there was screaming, crying, crazy ... I saw my friends die quickly,” the Boston Herald reported.
Sanches was questioned for almost an hour. He was asked about whether the windows were rolled up, how loud the music was, and whether media coverage influenced his testimony. Sanches seemed frustrated by some of the questions, according to the Herald.
He said that he didn’t follow football and hadn’t heard of New England Patriots tight end Hernandez before the shooting. He also said that media reports only refreshed his memory, the Herald reported.
The pretrial hearing was held at the Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, and it was intended to decide whether Sanches and another witness who was also in the car would be allowed to give a “general description” of the shooter.
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