Aaron Hernandez Murder Trial News Update: Ex-NFL Player Spent Night Eating, Drinking Hours Before Odin Lloyd's Murder
Prosecutors presented evidence that Aaron Hernandez enjoyed a night of drinking and eating while out with a group of friends just hours before he allegedly killed Odin Lloyd in 2013.
On Thursday, prosecutors showed the jury surveillance video of the former New England Patriots player putting gas in his rental car and dancing near a gas pump about an hour before the murder.
Hernandez and two co-defendants have been charged with killing Lloyd, who had been dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancée, in the early morning hours of June 17, 2013.
According to prosecutors, Hernandez, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz picked Lloyd up in a rented Nissan Altima and then drove him "to a secluded, isolated area in North Attleborough," said Bristol County prosecutor Patrick Bomberg, reports The Boston Globe. "There Odin Lloyd was shot 6 times. He was killed, and he was left in a secluded area," he said. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty.
Earlier that night, Hernandez paid a visit to the South Street Café in Providence, where a former bar manager testified that he and friends ordered 10 vodka-based Sex On The Beach shots, 11 shots of Hennessy cognac, two shots of Grey Goose vodka and seven Bud Lights. Hernandez was accompanied by his then-fiancée and two other couples that night, said prosecution witness Kelly Rose Belanger Thursday, according to The Hartford Courant.
Along with over $200 worth of alcohol, a receipt shows that the former Patriots tight end and his friends also ordered two dishes of Baked Stuffed Shrimp, crab cakes and 30 wings. Belanger said that he paid the $243 tab and left a $30 tip, reports CBS News. After staying at the bar for almost three hours, they closed their tab around 12:18 a.m. on June 17, three hours before Lloyd was fatally shot.
Belanger added that she spotted Hernandez and a friend smoking marijuana while standing outside South Street Café.
"I asked them to put it out because the other customers could smell it," Belanger said. "And they did...they came back in and sat back down at the table."
After leaving the Providence bar, authorities say Hernandez drove back to his house in North Attleborough and met up with Wallace and Ortiz. The three men then went to pick up the victim in his home in Dorchester.
Surveillance footage from Blue Hill Express gas station in Canton, where Hernandez stopped at around 2 a.m., shows him exit the driver's seat of a rented Nissan Altima and start pumping gas. Multiple camera angles captured Hernandez prancing around the parking lot, throwing his hands in the air and dancing.
Ortiz was also seen on the footage with a white towel draped around his shoulders. A white towel with Ortiz's DNA was then found at the crime scene where Lloyd was shot.
A marijuana cigar was found feet away from Lloyd's lifeless body, in addition to a .45 caliber spent shell casing in the vehicle, which matched the casings found at the crime scene.
Authorities never found the murder weapon.
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