Jurors Won't Hear Testimony From Hernandez's Childhood Friend
FALL RIVER (CBS) - Aaron Hernandez craned his neck to get a good look at his childhood friend testifying against him.
Robert Paradis said Hernandez talked about having a .45 caliber gun one-and-a-half months before Hernandez's friend, Odin Lloyd, was gunned down with a .45. Paradis said it came up when he was in a car with Hernandez and his alleged accomplice, Ernest Wallace. He used street slang to describe what Hernandez told him he had under his car seat. "He just had "heat" or "fire", made reference to the 45."
Hernandez had paid to fly Paradis first class to vacation in Los Angeles and stay in his condominium there. He said Hernandez left, and called asking him to check for something in his top drawer. Paradis said he felt a gun wrapped in a T-shirt. "Seven inches long...It was a gun."
This testimony played out without the jury in the court room, because Judge Susan Garsh wanted to hear it first before deciding if it should be allowed in the trial. Interesting as it was, she ruled it's not relevant to the case, and will therefore be left out.
What jurors did hear Wednesday: a whole lot about a wad of blue bubble gum allegedly chewed by Hernandez. The manager of Enterprise Rental said she found it stuck to a .45 caliber bullet casing under a seat in a car Hernandez returned the day of Lloyd's murder.
She also said the car was significantly damaged, and he came to "switch it out." Prosecutors also showed a violation notice indicating the same car had skipped a toll on the MassPike in the early morning hours leading up to the murder.
Also on the witness stand, the uncle of the divided sisters, Hernandez's fiance Shayanna Jenkins, and Lloyd's girlfriend Shaneah Jenkins. Azia Jenkins remembered Hernandez seemed to predict the demise of his career during a conversation one day after the murder. "Aaron said my endorsements are gone."