Jailed former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez is being investigated by the Boston police as the possible gunman in a 2012 double slaying, according to a search warrant request released Thursday.
In surveillance footage, Hernandez, who is awaiting trial on murder charges in a 2013 shooting near his home, was seen to be in the same nightclub as the victims the night of the attack in Boston's South End, the Associated Press reported.
But the newly-released documents confirm for the first time that police suspect Hernandez could have pulled the trigger. On July 16, 2012, Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado were killed when someone inside an SUV opened fire on their car. A third person was shot but survived. No charges have been filed yet.
According to the AP, there's probable cause to believe that Hernandez was driving the vehicle used in the shooting and ''may have been the shooter," police said in the affidavit and search warrant application released by Superior Court in Bristol, Conn.
Police found the SUV involved in the shooting a month later at Hernandez's uncle's home in Bristol, his hometown. Hernandez was given the SUV by a Rhode Island company in exchange for participating in promotional activities, according to court filing. Covered in dust and cobwebs and with a dead battery, the SUV led police to believe that it had been untouched in the garage for close to a year, according to the court document.
According to the AP, "It is not clear from the affidavit why police believe Hernandez may have pulled the trigger in the 2012 shooting. The section of the affidavit that appears to explain that reason is one of several redacted from the public copy of the document."
Survivor Aquilino Freire told police that while they were stopped at a traffic light, an SUV pulled up next to them, and he saw someone in the SUV's back seat laughing, according to the affidavit. Freire told police that several gunshots were fired from the rear passenger seat into the car and two other people in the car ran away, the AP reported.
Authorities found the silver Toyota 4Runner while investigating the slaying of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player whose body was found June 17 near Hernandez's North Attleborough, Mass., home. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to murder in that case, according to the AP.
After receiving an anonymous call on June 22, police began investigating a possible link between the 2012 and 2103 shootings, according to the affidavit released Thursday and a second warrant request released earlier this month.
The caller, identified in the court documents as Sharif Hasheem, a security supervisor at a Boston nightclub, told authorities the two shootings were related and that ''someone accidently spilled the beans in front of me.''
The search warrant application also includes a request to search a bag of clothing, identified as belonging to Hernandez, found in the Bristol home. It says police were looking for ''clothing and accessories that Aaron Hernandez wore on the night of June 16, 2012,'' the AP reported.
