Report: Aaron Hernandez’s brother accused of vandalizing ESPN property

BRISTOL, CT (WFSB) - The brother of late embattled New England Patriots player and Bristol native Aaron Hernandez is accused of vandalizing ESPN’s property.

Dennis “DJ” Hernandez was arrested last week after he reportedly threw a brick at a building in Bristol, according to an incident report from Bristol police.

The report said an Uber arrived at ESPN on March 23. The passenger got out, threw something on the property, and got back into the car.

An anonymous complaint to Bristol police spoke of concerns that DJ Hernandez wanted to destroy property at both the state capitol and ESPN by specifically smashing out windows.

During the investigation, police at ESPN discovered a white plastic bag with a large brick in it, with a handwritten note that said:

Police found that the note was signed “yours truly, dennis j. Hernandez.”

The 36-year-old was arrested on a second-degree breach of peace charge and given a court date in April.

“That’s kind of crazy. I don’t know why somebody would do that, especially at ESPN,” said Angel Colon, a former classmate of both Aaron and DJ Hernandez. “I went to Bristol Central when Aaron was a senior. DJ I didn’t know very much about, but I knew he had a lot of records for football.”

The suspect had another recent run in with police.

DJ Hernandez was wanted by Cheshire police after an incident on March 8, according to an arrest warrant.

He led police on a brief pursuit. Officers noticed he had a bipolar episode, the warrant said. He had been committed to Bristol Hospital.

The arrest warrant said he attempted to charge $7,000 on his mother’s credit card and that she believed he needed to be mentally evaluated.

Dr. Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven, said her research showed that mental health plays a large role in most adult criminals.

“What happens is as the condition worsens, like that bipolar episode unfolds, they become more and more disconnected from reality and do more and more bizarre things and that feeling of superiority and invincibility increases where they really have a hard time gaging their actions with reality. I assume something like this happened here,” Tcherni-Buzzeo told Channel 3.

DJ Hernandez was arrested on March 23 following the ESPN incident and then handed over to Cheshire police and charged with reckless driving, engaging police in pursuit, failure to drive right, failure to maintain lane, and failure to obey traffic control signal from the March 8 incident.

DJ Hernandez is expected in court on April 6 and then again on April 13.

He was told by Bristol police that if he returned to the ESPN campus, he would be arrested on a trespassing charge.

ESPN released a comment: “We are cooperating with Bristol Police on its investigation.”

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