It was only last week the former NFL player was acquitted in court for the double murder of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu; (two men killed in a drive-by shooting outside a Boston nightclub) while serving a life sentence for the murder of Odyn Lloyd, a semi-pro NFL player in which he was appealing his conviction. Now Aaron Hernandez suicide is not only shocking but questionable to many.
Hernandez was visibly emotional, though smiling when Friday’s verdicts were read, embracing his attorneys with tears in his eyes. One of his attorneys said Hernandez was relieved about the verdict. Hernandez’s attorneys had appealed for a new trial in the Lloyd case.
Hernandez suicide further taints his legacy, because he had a promising football career before his June 2013 arrest in Lloyd’s death. The Patriots’ fourth-round pick in 2010 had signed a five-year contract extension in 2012 worth up to $40 million.
The 27-year-old former New England Patriots tight end hanged himself with a bed sheet attached to a window in his cell at the Souza Baranowski prison in Shirley, the Massachusetts Department of Correction said. His body was discovered at 3:05 a.m.
Hernandez’s suicide comes on the day his former team is set to visit the White House to celebrate its February Super Bowl victory.
“Lifesaving techniques were attempted on Mr. Hernandez, and he was transported to UMass Leominster, where he was pronounced dead at 4:07 a.m.,” the correction department’s statement reads.
Hernandez, who was in a single cell in general population, was alone in his cell in a general population wing, hanged himself and had “attempted to block his door from the inside by jamming the door with various items,” the statement reads.
Department of Corrections spokesman Christopher Fallon said that Hernandez was not on suicide watch because there was no indication that was necessary.
The Massachusetts State police are currently investigating his death.
