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Ex-NFL player Aaron Hernandez guilty of murder


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Aaron Hernandez Shed Tackles, but Not His Past

Aaron Hernandez grew up in the flagging factory city of Bristol, Conn., where during his youth a declining downtown was prowled by petty criminals who dreamed of making bigger scores in New England’s prosperous hubs.

Mr. Hernandez’s circle of friends included small-time crooks, but he was largely shielded from the serious wrongdoing because he was one of the few who had a golden ticket out of central Connecticut. At 17 years old, after he was allowed to graduate high school early, he left home as a prized football recruit of the University of Florida, relocating so he could get an early start on becoming a big-time college football player.

Within a few years, he was a star for the N.F.L.’s New England Patriots, signing a $40 million contract extension and moving into a huge home in suburban Massachusetts.

He had left behind his Bristol neighborhood and an unruly, sometimes violent household. But he had never truly escaped.

On Wednesday, Mr. Hernandez was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the killing of an acquaintance, Odin Lloyd.

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Mr. Lloyd, a semiprofessional football player from Boston, had apparently angered Mr. Hernandez.

With Mr. Hernandez at the time of the killing, prosecutors said, were two men with Bristol roots. A jury of seven women and five men convicted Mr. Hernandez of pulling the trigger of the gun that killed Mr. Lloyd, including sending two shots to Mr. Lloyd’s chest as he squirmed in pain inside a dusty industrial park less than a mile from Mr. Hernandez’s palatial home.

It was the latest discomfiting episode for the N.F.L., which has grappled in recent seasons with the consequences of the violent behavior off the field by many of its players.

Mr. Hernandez also awaits trial, charged with the murder of two men during a drive-by shooting in Boston in 2012. Mr. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty. That shooting, prosecutors say, was a chance encounter after an altercation in a bar in which one of the victims spilled Mr. Hernandez’s drink.

In Bristol in the 1990s, he was known as the football-playing son of Dennis Hernandez, a local sports hero who had been a decorated athlete at the University of Connecticut. He was a custodian in Bristol, but around the city he was known as the King.

Friends and teammates of Mr. Hernandez said that his father was uncomfortable about some of his son’s rough-and-tumble associates in Bristol and kept him on a tight leash, especially as Mr. Hernandez became a pass-catching star at Bristol Central High School.

But in 2006, Dennis Hernandez died from complications of hernia surgery. In interviews with newspapers at the time, Aaron’s mother, Terri, said that she worried that Aaron would lose the direction in his life that his father had provided.

By then he was smashing state high school records and attracting the attention of college football recruiters nationwide. To most everyone in town, it was also obvious he began running with a rougher crowd, people he kept in touch with even as he moved on to Florida and, later, the Patriots.

In his freshman year at Florida, while still 17, Mr. Hernandez got into a fight with a bouncer at a bar. He received deferred prosecution after being charged as a juvenile. In the fall of that year, The Orlando Sentinel reported that Mr. Hernandez was questioned by the police about a shooting that injured two men. Friends from Connecticut were with Mr. Hernandez that night, The Sentinel reported.

As a sophomore, he was suspended for the season-opening game. Mr. Hernandez later acknowledged that he had tested positive for marijuana. But by Mr. Hernandez’s junior year, Florida Coach Urban Meyer was saying that his player had been rehabilitated. Mr. Meyer had led him in daily Bible study sessions.

N.F.L. teams were not swayed. Once considered a top pick, Mr. Hernandez, then 20, fell to the Patriots in the fourth round, and his selection was viewed as a risky move. There were reports that he had failed multiple drug tests.

Back home in Bristol, his mother had remarried, but the union did not last long. One day, his stepfather knifed his mother and went to jail for the crime.

During the same year, The Hartford Courant contacted Mr. Hernandez’s high school football coach, Doug Pina, who said of his former player: “Personally, I’ve always had concerns. He’s still finding himself. With the right people around, if he keeps his head straight, he’ll do very well.”

With the Patriots, Mr. Hernandez was often portrayed as a loner on a high-profile team of stars. He was frequently in the company of buddies from Bristol, which was less than a two-hour drive from the team’s stadium and practice complex.

But Mr. Hernandez was an uncommon combination of size and speed, and the Patriots’ owner, Robert K. Kraft, who testified at Mr. Hernandez’s trial, lavished him with a plentiful contract extension. When Mr. Hernandez in return donated $50,000 to a charity of Mr. Kraft’s, the team owner called the gesture “a touching moment.”

Mr. Hernandez told reporters at the announcement of his contract extension that he had tears in his eyes and had been nurtured by “the Patriot way.”

Not long afterward, in separate romances, Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Lloyd began dating two sisters from Bristol. Mr. Hernandez and one of the sisters, Shayanna Jenkins, were high school sweethearts. Mr. Lloyd began dating Ms. Jenkins’s sister, Shaneah.

At family gatherings, the two men became acquainted. Over time, the men spent time together away from the Jenkins sisters, although they were an odd fit. Mr. Lloyd lived in a hardscrabble section of Boston where Mr. Hernandez’s pricey cars stood out.

Mr. Hernandez and Mr. Lloyd often went clubbing in the Boston area, and on one late-night outing in June 2013, prosecutors say, Mr. Hernandez became angry with some of the people Mr. Lloyd was talking with. Investigators indicated that Mr. Hernandez might have suspected that Mr. Lloyd had overheard talk about the Boston double murder and whether Mr. Hernandez had been involved in it.

At 2:29 a.m. on June 17, according to prosecutors, Mr. Hernandez picked up Mr. Lloyd at his home in the Dorchester section of Boston. Less than an hour later, apparently worried about Mr. Hernandez’s intentions, Mr. Lloyd texted his sister at home. “Did you see who I was with?” Mr. Lloyd texted.

“Who,” she answered.

“NFL,” Mr. Lloyd texted back, adding, “Just so you know.”

Later that night, a surveillance camera captured an image of Mr. Hernandez in his home carrying a handgun. With him were two friends from Bristol, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz.

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