The older brother of former NFL star and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez was arrested last week after he allegedly threw a brick at the ESPN headquarters in his native Bristol, Connecticut, according to a local police newspaper.
The crime was revealed by TMZreporting that Bristol police also conducted a welfare check on Hernandez’s older brother, Dennis, 36, after he allegedly stated that he wanted to break windows at the Connecticut State Capital in Hartford and on ESPN.
ESPN security reportedly told Bristol police that an Uber was turned away at the campus gates on Wednesday, after which a passenger got out of the vehicle and tossed a white plastic bag containing a brick and a handwritten note on the ground.
That passenger is believed to be Dennis or ‘DJ’ Hernandez, who recently wrote a book about his late brother Aaron under the name ‘Jonathan Hernandez.’ No one was hurt, but DJ now faces a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.
The note does not specifically mention Aaron, who committed suicide in prison in 2017 after being convicted in 2015 of the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
DJ Hernandez (left), the older brother of Aaron (right) was arrested last week in Connceticut
ESPN is based in Bristol, Connecticut, where Aaron and DJ Hernandez were raised.
“To all the media,” the letter began. “It is about time that everyone realizes (sic) the effect (sic) that the media has on all family members. Since you are a world leader, perhaps you could lead the way that media and messaging are delivered brick by brick. Clean it up!
“Sincerely, Dennis J. Hernandez,” the message concluded.
An ESPN security guard told an officer they were “90 percent sure” it was DJ who threw the brick.
Bristol Police did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for additional information. Also, ESPN spokespersons did not immediately respond to questions from DailyMail.com about DJ’s arrest.
TMZ also reports that DJ was arrested by another Connecticut police department two weeks earlier following an alleged bipolar episode.
The Cheshire Police Department claims DJ was speeding on March 8, leading officers on a high-speed chase across a grassy field. He is also accused of running a red light, where he managed to lose chasing offers.
TMZ reports that police contacted his mother, Terri, who told them that DJ “had been acting very strangely and I thought he needed to be mentally evaluated at a hospital.”
DJ was eventually apprehended after a “brief foot chase,” reports TMZ.
Hernandez’s older brother allegedly told police that he was trying to get arrested because he “didn’t want to stay at his mother’s house anymore.”
DJ faces five charges in the incident and is due back in court next month.
DJ Hernandez now faces a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, according to a police record
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 disorders, 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 based in the central Connecticut city of Bristol, where Aaron and DJ starred as high school football players in the early 2000s.
While DJ would play quarterback and receiver at UConn, Aaron became one of the best tight ends in the country at the University of Florida despite his frequent run-ins with the law, including a bar fight in 2007. Aaron also he was wanted for questioning in a 2007 shooting in Gainesville, Florida.
Hernandez was convicted in 2015 of killing semi-professional soccer player Odin Lloyd. Two years later, the 27-year-old committed suicide in his prison cell days after he was cleared of most charges in a separate double murder case.
A judge threw out Hernández’s conviction that year, citing the legal principle that a defendant convicted in a trial who dies before an appeal is heard should no longer be considered guilty in the eyes of the law, thus returning the case to his pre-trial 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 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that struck down that legal principle.
The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously found that the legal rule that erased Hernández’s conviction was ‘outdated and no longer in keeping with the circumstances of contemporary life.’ He ordered that Hernandez’s conviction be reinstated 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 Understanding My Brother’.
DJ, under the name ‘Jonathan’, wrote a book about his late brother in 2018 (pictured)