Babysitter says ex-NFL star came on to her day before murder

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[March 10, 2015]  By Daniel Lovering
 
 FALL RIVER, Mass. (Reuters) - Ex-NFL star Aaron Hernandez made sexual advances toward his babysitter after driving her and the man he allegedly killed the following day to an apartment in Franklin, Massachusetts, the babysitter testified on Monday.

Jennifer Fortier, 28, said she and a friend got into a black SUV Hernandez was driving after they left a Boston nightclub around 2 a.m. on June 16, 2013. Hernandez drove them out of Boston to the apartment 42 miles (68 km) to the southwest, where he came onto her, she said.

Joining them in the SUV and in the apartment was a man she later recognized from news reports as Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player who was dating Hernandez's sister.

Hernandez, 25, is accused of fatally shooting Lloyd the following day. He is being tried on murder and firearms charges at Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River, Massachusetts. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

He had a $41 million contract with the New England Patriots before he was arrested and dropped from the team.
 


Prosecutors say Hernandez and two friends, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, picked up Lloyd at his Boston home in the early hours of June 17, 2013, and drove him to an industrial park near Hernandez's house in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, where his bullet-riddled body was found later that day.

Wallace and Ortiz have also been charged with murder and will be tried separately. All three have pleaded not guilty.

Fortier, the babysitter, said Hernandez drove her and her friend to the Franklin apartment, where he took wine from the refrigerator and later summoned her to the bedroom and kissed her. Hernandez had rented the apartment earlier, witnesses said.

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"I said, 'No, I'm your nanny, I can't do this,'" she told Assistant District Attorney William McCauley, adding that Hernandez told her he understood and wasn't mad.

Fortier, who previously had traveled to Mexico with Hernandez and his fiancée and baby, said her friend and Lloyd were asleep on a couch when she left the bedroom, and that she called a taxi to get back to Boston.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Michael Fee, she agreed acknowledged she kissed Hernandez back before telling him to stop.

Earlier, Fortier testified two men identified as Wallace and Ortiz came to Hernandez's house around midnight the following night, when she was babysitting, hours before the murder allegedly took place.

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis, Alan Crosby and Christian Plumb)

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