In the end, perhaps for the first time in his life, it didn’t matter how fast Aaron Hernandez could run because, as he learned yesterday, there are some things you can’t outrun. A jury of his peers was one of them.
The former New England Patriots Pro Bowl tight end was convicted of murdering a 27-year-old acquaintance named Odin Lloyd yesterday in Fall River after a two-month trial and six days of jury deliberation. Like Hernandez, Lloyd was a football player, but he had none of the many gifts Hernandez was blessed with.
When Hernandez moved he was like a gazelle, bounding free, so difficult to corral that at times it seemed as if he’d disappeared right in front of a defender. His ability was recognized early and at some point he began to understand that it was a key that could unlock any door.
Time and again, we came to learn, it had gotten him out of trouble. It made grown men look the other way or tolerate in him things they would not have accepted in their own children.
He would become All-America at Florida, but had barely been in Gainesville for two weeks when, at 17, he tried to walk out on a bar tab and sucker punched a bar employee, rupturing his eardrum. The police wanted to prosecute but the football star got “deferred prosecution.” In other words, he could run fast so they let him walk. Odin Lloyd would not have been so lucky. Neither would you.
He became a first-round talent but wasn’t selected until the fourth round because at least a dozen NFL teams refused to consider him for employment. Some, like Atlanta general manager Thomas Dimitroff, didn’t like his attitude or his entourage. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he had a feeling and he didn’t like what he felt.
Even the Oakland Raiders, known for being the NFL’s version of Boys Town, declined to put Hernandez on their board, a source in their organization said. They’d heard too many stories about too many problems and were aware that every time he went home to Bristol, Conn., the coaches at Florida held their breath. The Patriots took a chance on him and he paid instant dividends. By his second season he was a Pro Bowl tight end who caught 79 passes and took them 910 yards. Seven times his runs ended in the end zone. His skills were undeniable, but after his arrest, former teammate Matt Light said, “I never talk about other guys but I will say I have never embraced - never believed in - anything Aaron Hernandez stood for.”
Hernandez was stopped in a car speeding around 100 mph on the Southeast Expressway a few nights after the Patriots were eliminated from the playoffs and told the cops everything was fine because, as he put it, “I’m Aaron Hernandez.” What the police allegedly did that night was give Hernandez a ride to Foxboro. After all, he had the gift. Wonder where they would have driven Odin Lloyd.
“Aaron Hernandez may have been a well-known New England Patriots football player,” Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn said after the verdict was announced. “However, in the end, the jury found that he was just a man who committed a brutal murder. The fact that he was a professional athlete meant nothing in the end. He is a citizen who was held accountable by the jury for his depraved conduct.”
Maybe Hernandez pulled the trigger and maybe he didn’t. But he was the alpha male in his circle of miscreants and misfits. He ran the show, bought the guns, summoned his accomplices to his side and drove what became Odin Lloyd’s funeral car to a darkened industrial park. Four went in. Three came out. It’s hard to outrun that, no matter what your gifts are.