FALL RIVER, Mass. -- Aaron Hernandez, the former star tight end for the New England Patriots, was indicted on Thursday for first-degree murder in the execution-style slaying of Odin L. Lloyd in an industrial pit near the football player's million-dollar home in North Attleboro.
A Bristol County (Mass.) grand jury that has been investigating Lloyd's murder since Hernandez arrest on June 26, handed up the six-count indictment in Fall River Superior Court. In addition to the murder charge, Hernandez faces five weapons charges.
Hernandez, 23, has been held without bail at the Bristol County House of Correction in North Dartmouth, Mass. for the past two months. It is unclear when he will be brought to court in Fall River to be arraigned on the murder charge. Once that is done, prosecutors and defense lawyers will begin preparing for a trial that could take place sometime next year.
The indictment canceled a probable cause hearing that was set for Hernandez this afternoon in Attleboro District Court. Nonetheless, he boarded a van from the county jail at 12:30 p.m. and headed to Attleboro.
Meanwhile, Hernandez continues to be the subject of other murder and shooting investigations in Massachusetts and Florida. A separate grand jury in Suffolk County (Mass.) is investigating a July 2010 drive-by double-murder in Boston.
In that case, Daniel Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, of Boston, were shot and killed while their BMW sedan idled at a traffic light in Boston. Earlier this summer, the police seized a Toyota 4-Runner with Rhode Island plates from a garage in Bristol, Conn. that his owned by Hernandez uncle, Andres ``Tito'' Valderrama. Police said they believe the sports-utility vehicle was used in the fatal drive-by shooting.
Hernandez is from Bristol and so are his co-defendants in the Lloyd murder: Ernest Wallace, 41, and Carlos A. Ortiz. Prosecutors say that Wallace and Ortiz were with Hernandez when Lloyd was picked up at his home in Boston, driven to North Attleboro and shot to death.
Investigators have not recovered the murder weapons, a .45 caliber Glock handgun. They do, however, have the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson murder used in the double-murder in Boston. The Massachusetts State Police recovered it in June from the trunk of a car driven by another Bristol, Conn. resident, Jailene Dias-Ramos, 19. She has been charged with three firearms violations.
It has been well-known that a Hernandez friend from Bristol, Conn., Alexander Bradley, testified for more than seven hours last month before the grand jury in Fall River. Bradley has filed a civil complaint in federal court in Florida seeking more than $100,000 from Hernandez. He claims that the ex-professional football player shot him in the face in February after they left Tootsie's, a strip club in Miami.
Bradley, who also is from Bristol, Conn., filed the complaint and claims that he lost sight in his right eye. He was discovered bleeding from the face and arm in an industrial park in Riviera Beach, Fla., about an hour north of Miami.
An investigator told The Journal that Bradley was with Hernandez in the Boston nightclub, Cure, in the hours before the double-drive-by murder in Boston last summer. Hernandez has not been charged with shooting Bradley.