A grand jury indicted former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez – already jailed in connection to a 2013 slaying — for a double-murder committed the year before, officials said Thursday.
The former football player is believed to be responsible for the July 15, 2012 killings of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, who were shot as they sat in a car in Boston’s South End neighborhood.
“[The victims were] ambushed and executed as they drove home,” Suffolk County DA Dan Conley said.
“Aaron Hernandez is the principal, the shooter and the person responsible for taking the lives of the two victims.”
Hernandez and the victims reportedly argued – had a “chance encounter,” Conley said – inside Cure nightclub in Boston just before the shooting.
Then Hernandez followed the victims out the club in his SUV, pulled up alongside the two men and then fired a .38-caliber revolver into the vehicle, according to Conley.
Investigators are still looking for accomplices in the double-slaying, officials said.
The disgraced Pats tight end is already being held without bail and charged with the June 17, 2013, murder of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd, 27, at an industrial park one mile away from Hernandez’s North Attleboro, Mass., home.
After Lloyd’s 2013 slaying, cops took a fresh look at Hernandez for these 2012 murders.
The DA declined to discuss what connections, if any, there are between the separate murders.
These new charges mean Hernandez might have played the 2012 NFL season as the killer of two men.
The hulking right end caught 51 passes – five for touchdowns – that season, when New England won the AFC East before losing to the Baltimore Ravens in the conference final.
“My job now is to speak for the victims in this case, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, “ Conley said.
“This case was never about Aaron Hernandez, you know, and his notoriety. This case was about, as all our cases are, about the victims, about accountability, about getting justice.”