HARTFORD, Conn. — An associate of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez was ordered held on $1 million bond Tuesday following his arrest on charges that he opened fire outside a Connecticut nightclub after an assailant shot him in the leg.
Alexander Bradley was arraigned in Hartford Superior Court on charges of criminal possession of a firearm and criminal use of a firearm.
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His attorney, Robert Pickering, told reporters that Bradley was attacked by a stranger without provocation and should be considered the victim in the case.
“He got punched in the face and shot in the leg three times,” Pickering said. He said that Bradley has attracted unwanted attention in public because of his connection to Hernandez.
Bradley, 31, was part of a disturbance involving money Sunday that spilled outside of the Vevo Lounge Bar & Grill in Hartford’s South Meadows neighborhood, police said. After he was shot multiple times in the right thigh, he retrieved a gun from his car and tried to enter the nightclub, police said, before he opened fire.
Detectives recovered 11 shell casings from outside the club, Hartford police Lt. Brian Foley said, and Bradley’s handgun was reported stolen from Springfield, Mass.
Police were still searching Tuesday for the person who shot Bradley.
Bradley alleges in a Florida lawsuit that he lost his right eye when Hernandez shot him in the face as they argued outside a Miami club last February.
Hernandez is detained on a murder charge in the death of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player whose body was found June 17 near Hernandez’s North Attleborough, Mass., home. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, Boston police have linked both Hernandez and Bradley to a double homicide in July 2012. Police believe Hernandez and Bradley were in an SUV when someone inside the vehicle fatally shot Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado in Boston’s South End, according to a search warrant filed by Bristol, Conn., police.
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