The older brother of former NFL star and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez was arrested last week after allegedly throwing a brick at ESPN headquarters in his native Bristol, Connecticut, according to a local police blotter.
The crime was revealed by TMZ, which reports that Bristol police were also asked to conduct a welfare check on Hernandez’s older brother, 36-year-old Dennis, after he allegedly stated that he wanted to smash windows at the Connecticut State Capital in Hartford and at ESPN in Bristol.
ESPN security reportedly told Bristol police that an Uber was turned away at the campus gates on Wednesday, after which, a passenger exited the vehicle and threw a white plastic bag containing a brick and a handwritten note onto the grounds.
That passenger is believed to be Dennis or ‘DJ’ Hernandez. Nobody was hurt, but DJ now faces a misdemeanor charge of breach of peace.
The note did not specifically mention Aaron, who committed suicide in prison in 2017 after being convicted in 2015 for the 2013 murder of semiprofessional football player Odin Lloyd.
DJ Hernandez (left), the older brother of Aaron (right) was arrested last week in Connceticut
ESPN is headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut, where Aaron and DJ Hernandez were raised
‘To all media outlets,’ the letter began. ‘It’s about time you all realeyes (sic) the affect (sic) media has on all family members. Since you’re a world wide leader maybe you could lead how media and messages are delivered brick by brick. Clean it up!
‘Yours truly, Dennis J. Hernandez,’ the message concluded.
An ESPN security guard told an officer they were ’90-percent positive’ that it was DJ who threw the brick.
Bristol police did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for further information. Likewise, ESPN spokespeople did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s questions about DJ’s arrest.
TMZ is also reporting that DJ was arrested by another Connecticut police department two weeks earlier following an alleged bipolar episode.
The Cheshire Police Department claims DJ was driving at high rates of speed on March 8, leading officers on a high-speed chase through a grass field. He’s also accused of blowing through a red light, where he managed to lose pursuing officers.
TMZ is reporting that police contacted his mother, Terri, who told them DJ had ‘been acting very strange and she believed he needed to be mentally evaluated at a hospital.’
DJ was eventually taken into custody after a ‘brief foot chase,’ TMZ reports.
The older Hernandez brother allegedly told police he was trying to get arrested because he ‘no longer wanted to stay at his mom’s house.’
DJ faces five charges over the incident and is due back in court next month.
DJ Hernandez now faces a misdemeanor charge of breach of peace, according to a police log
DJ Hernandez (pictured) worked as a graduate assistant at the University of Miami
Although it’s unclear if DJ has been diagnosed with any mental disorder, Aaron was found to have an advanced case of the degenerative brain disease, CTE, after an autopsy.
Since its launch in 1979, ESPN has been headquartered in the central Connecticut town of Bristol, where Aaron and DJ starred as high school football players in the early 2000s.
While DJ would go on to play quarterback and receiver at UConn, Aaron became one of the top tight ends in the country at the University of Florida despite his frequent run-ins with the law, including a bar fight 2007 bar fight. Aaron was also wanted for questioning in a 2007 shooting in Gainesville, Florida.
Hernandez was convicted in 2015 of killing semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd. Two years later, the 27-year-old killed himself in his prison cell days after being acquitted of most charges in a separate double-murder case.
A judge threw out Hernandez’s conviction that year, citing the legal principle that holds that a defendant convicted at trial who dies before an appeal is heard should no longer be considered guilty in the eyes of the law, thereby returning the case to its pretrial status. The prosecution then appealed, seeking to have the conviction reinstated.
Under the doctrine, rooted in centuries of English law, a conviction should not be considered final until an appeal can determine whether mistakes were made that deprived the defendant of a fair trial, legal experts say.
In 2019, Aaron’s murder conviction was reinstated in a sweeping ruling from Massachusetts’ highest court that did away with that legal principle.
The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously found that the legal rule that erased Hernandez’s conviction was ‘outdated and no longer consonant with the circumstances of contemporary life.’ It ordered that Hernandez’s conviction be restored and that the practice be abolished for future cases. The ruling does not affect past cases.
DJ, under the name ‘Jonathan,’ wrote a book about his late brother in 2018, titled: ‘The Truth About Aaron: My Journey to Understand My Brother.’
DJ, under the name ‘Jonathan,’ wrote a book about his late brother in 2018 (pictured)
