Aaron Hernandez slugged a bartender in Gainesville, Florida back in 2007, according to reports, injuring his victim badly enough that police at the time recommended he be arrested and charged with felony assault.
A police report obtained by The Wall Street Journal describes a night in which Hernandez "consumed two alcoholic drinks" at a bar called The Swamp, then punched bartender Michael Taphorn when he dared demand that Hernandez pay for his drinks.
The powerful punch from the tight end left Taphorn with a ruptured eardrum, and led cops to call for the felony assault charges. It is unclear why those charges never came to fruition, but later that year, he was questioned by Florida police in a shooting.
Gainesville police officer Ben Tobias said, "Hernandez's name came up once in the report and he was questioned very briefly. Anytime we have an incident like that, we investigate and follow any lead whatsoever. We got his name as being in the area of that club, so we questioned him."
In that incident two men, Corey T. Smith, 33, and Justin E. Glass, 24, were in a stopped vehicle when gunfire erupted and Smith was shot in the head, while Glass took a bullet in the arm. The men were able to drive themselves to a nearby hospital for treatment. The shots came from an unidentified man who walked past the car and fired with a handgun.
As time goes by, more and more allegations of violence involving the 23-year-old Hernandez are surfacing, which will not do him any good once his first-degree murder trial begins. He has been accused of fatally shooting an "associate" of his, 27-year-old semipro football player Odin Lloyd.
He is also being investigated in connection to a 2012 double homicide, which some in law enforcement believe Lloyd had knowledge of, thus motivating Hernandez to silence him.
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