Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez was identified in court Tuesday as the shooter from a deadly 2012 drive-by shooting in Boston by one of the survivors from the incident.
Raychides Sanches testified during a pre-trial hearing in Suffolk Superior Court that he was a passenger in a car on July 16, 2012, when an SUV pulled up and opened fire after a brief exchange. The two other men in the car, Daniel de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, were struck and killed.
Sanches survived that night, and when asked Tuesday by prosecutors to ID the shooter, he pointed toward the defendant.
“Looked like him,” he said via the Boston Herald, via NBC News. “Hernandez.”
Hernandez faces two counts of murder in the deaths of de Abreu and Furtado. Aquilino Freire, another witness in the shooting, testified that he was shot twice and described the shooter as light-skinned with tattoos but no beard.
The former Pats RB is due back in court for another pre-trial hearing Dec. 27. Jury selection is set to begin Feb. 13 for the double homicide trial.
Hernandez currently is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for another shooting death, that of Odin Lloyd from 2013.
