Aaron Hernandez Trial Resumes After Bomb Threat Evacuates Courthouse

A bomb threat temporarily halted proceedings Thursday in former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez's murder trial.

A security officer said the bomb threat was called in to the Fall River Justice Center in Massachusetts, where Hernandez is standing trial. Superior Court Judge Susan Garsh said in court when proceedings resumed just after 2 p.m. that the bomb threat wasn't connected with the Hernandez case.

Jeffrey Morrow, director of security for the Massachusetts Trial Court, says there is no know connection between the bomb threat and ongoing cases at the Fall River Justice Center.

Around 12:50 p.m., officers began letting employees only back in the building. The district attorney's office said a bomb scare was called in to Taunton and Fall River superior courts at the same time.

Hernandez is accused in the June 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee. Testimony in the Hernandez trial began Jan. 29.

The judge said earlier Thursday that jailhouse calls in which Hernandez discusses giving money to a cousin could be used as evidence in the case. Prosecutors say the promises of money were used to buy her silence Lloyd's death.

In a decision released Thursday, Garsh said she would also allow a July 12, 2013, call in which Hernandez, speaking from jail, tells his cousin Tanya Singleton: "Obviously don't say nothing."

"I'm not saying nothing," she replies.

Singleton, who has terminal cancer, spent seven months in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Lloyd's killing. She has also pleaded not guilty to helping Hernandez co-defendant Ernest Wallace flee to Georgia.

In a July 23, 2013, conversation from behind bars, Hernandez is recorded saying he set up trust funds of $75,000 or $100,000 for Singleton's two sons, which he says could grow to several hundred thousand dollars in time.

In fact, he never set up the trust funds.

Singleton's sister, Jennifer Mercado, completed her testimony in the case Thursday. Mercado, who was granted immunity and ordered by the court to testify, said on the stand this week that Wallace and Hernandez's other co-defendant, Carlos Ortiz, sometimes smoked PCP and that Wallace would act crazy, jittery and erratic.

She said surveillance video taken at Hernandez's home in the early morning hours before the killing showed the two men acting jittery. But upon seeing more video Thursday from that morning and later that day, Mercado said it did not appear that Wallace and Ortiz were acting erratic or crazy.

Wallace and Ortiz have pleaded not guilty and are being tried separately.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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