Witness identifies ex-Pat Aaron Hernandez as shooter in double murder
Hernandez is already serving a life sentence without parole for another murder
In a pretrial hearing on Tuesday, a survivor from a 2012 shooting identified former Patriots star Aaron Hernandez as the man who pulled the trigger in a double homicide.
Raychides Sanches pointed to Hernandez when asked by one of Hernandez's attorneys, Jose Baez, who fired the gun that killed Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu.
"What did the shooter look like?" Baez asked.
"Looked like him," Sanches replied, nodding in the direction of the defense table where Hernandez was seated. "Hernandez."
During more than an hour of dramatic testimony, Sanches told the court he watched his two longtime friends die before his eyes. He said "there was screaming, crying, crazy."
Asked by Baez if he was splattered with blood, Sanches responded: "Hell yeah, a lot of blood."
Sanches also described the shooter as ""light-skinned" with a "thin face, younger than him, clean-shaven and wearing a hat with a design on it."
A second survivor described the shooter as "as light-skinned, with no beard and sporting tattoos."
CBS Boston has video of parts of the testimony:
Baez argued that the witnesses don't actually have a recollection of the evening in question, but instead based their testimony on what they've been seeing in the media.
"I don't see how there is anything you can glean from these witnesses at all," Baez said afterward. "The second you are getting your evidence from TMZ, you've got a problem."
The prosecution argued against the idea of excluding testimony from witnesses based simply on media coverage existing.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Feb. 13 -- the defense attorneys are seeking to push the trial back into September. Both sides will return to court for a Dec. 27 hearing.
Hernandez is already serving a life sentence without parole for the killing of Odin Lloyd in June 2013.
