The murder case involving Aaron Hernandez has been in and out of the courts over the past couple weeks, as Hernandez himself and his girlfriend Shayanna Jenkins appeared in a pretrial hearing and an arraignment and now another person involved in the case, accomplice Carlos Ortiz, will be next as he is set to appear at Fall River Justice Center.
According to My Fox Boston, Ortiz is scheduled to appear in court for an arraignment on charges of being an accessory to murder after the fact and this comes after he was charged earlier in the month. Ortiz was arrested soon after Hernandez as an accomplice in the murder of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player who was connected to the former Patriots tight end. Lloyd was found murdered less than a mile from the house Hernandez lived in with his fiance Shayanna Jenkins and Ortiz was later apprehended as an accomplice in the crime and reports have said that he was from Bristol just like Hernandez.
After he was arrested many family members came out to newspapers and said to reporters that Ortiz, who according to USA Today has three children, two girls and a boy that are young, was a good father and that it was "impossible" that he could take part in something like a murder. Lloyd was initially connected to Hernandez through his girlfriend, as Lloyd was reportedly dating the sister of Shayanna Jenkins when he was killed. Jenkins was charged in the case as well with one count of perjury, as prosecutors accused her of lying about destroying evidence in the case.
The count of perjury carries a serious sentence when it involves a murder case and My Fox Boston reported that police searched a storage unit that was in Jenkins' name as a possible location for the murder, weapon, but it was not found there. The gun in the murder has not been found and when Hernandez was last in court, it was for a pretrial hearing and before that he pleaded not guilty to his charges in the case, including first degree murder, which could be a life sentence.
