It reads like a story out of an episode of HBO’s The Wire or The Sopranos, but with an NFL twist. Former New England Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez shot a man between the eyes and left him for dead, but little did Hernandez know the guy survived and wanted to hunt Hernandez down and kill him.
The thing is, while The Wire and The Sopranos are fictional, this Hernandez story is not.
In a crazy piece written by Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel, the friendship of Aaron Hernandez and Alexander Bradley is described as “inseparable,” only to later evolve into a violent rivalry that ended up in Suffolk Superior Court on Monday.
Why were the two in court together? Hernandez’s double-murder trial for the killing of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in a 2012 drive-by shooting.
Bradley (seen above) testified in the trial, and the impact of Hernandez’s attempted murder of his former friend was easily visible as Bradley’s right eye no longer works. Instead, Bradley utilized his only working eye to stare down Hernandez and make it very clear; when Hernandez shot Bradley and left him for dead, but he survived, all he wanted was to kill Hernandez.
“I didn’t want to talk to the police,” Bradley said. “I wanted Mr. Hernandez. I wanted his life.”
…Bradley is testifying against Hernandez as the state of Massachusetts’ star witness for the killing of Abreu and Furtado. Bradley drove the car Hernandez was in when he shot the two men and Bradley is not only the only witness that can put Hernandez at the scene of the crime, but also the only witness who can say Hernandez pulled the trigger.
The real eye-opening portions of Wetzel’s piece, however, aren’t how testified that he was present for that shooting by Hernandez. Once again, it’s about how Hernandez shot Bradley and left him for dead on a vacation gone wrong in Florida in February 2013, and how the latter survived.
After another trip to the strip club Tootsie’s, the two were arguing early in the morning about the bill. Bradley realized he left his cell phone in the club and Hernandez refused to return to get it.
The two continued to argue, but Bradley eventually fell asleep before waking up in a terrifying situation.“I woke up with Mr. Hernandez pointing a gun at my face,” Bradley said. “… Right between my eyebrows.”
The next thing that happened should’ve killed Bradley. Hernandez fired and hit Bradley between the eyes. Bradley knew immediately his right eye was gone, but somehow he didn’t lose consciousness. Hernandez knocked him out of the car and left him there for dead, but did call an ambulance.
At that moment Bradley had two goals. Live. Kill Hernandez.”
Bradley did survive, but it doesn’t look like he’ll accomplish his second goal. However, testifying against Hernandez and making his life sentence somehow even worse is probably close enough.
