The deranged gun nut who shot three Connecticut cops — killing two — was a highschool soccer teammate of murderous professional Aaron Hernandez, The Publish can reveal.
On-line data present that Nicholas Brutcher, 35, was a scholar at Bristol Central Excessive Faculty concurrently Hernandez, the disgraced former New England Patriots star who killed himself in prison whereas serving life with out the potential for parole for homicide.
The long run killers shared a variety of mutual mates — and have been teammates on the college’s varsity soccer crew, the Rams.
Match stats show that in 2004, the pair performed at the very least 9 video games collectively, beginning with a disastrous season opener on Sept. 17 that 12 months, during which they obtained destroyed 62-0 by New Britain.
Cop-killer Brutcher was already a 6-foot-2, 240-pound senior who used his measurement as a defensive sort out. His final recreation for the Rams seems to have been a 20-0 victory over neighboring Bristol Japanese that Nov. 25.
Hernandez was solely a junior, however already a varsity standout, exhibiting the abilities as a good finish that might take him to the NFL. That 12 months, he caught 67 passes for a complete of 1,807 yards, in response to a Connecticut highschool file.
His success was due to a partnership with Dennis SanSoucie — the quarterback who would later reveal a secret sexual relationship with the receiving tight finish throughout their center and highschool years.
Earlier than he was shot useless after his massacre Wednesday, Brutcher was nonetheless Fb mates with SanSoucie, who now lives in Las Vegas. He couldn’t be instantly reached for remark Friday.
The cop-killer was additionally friends with Hernandez’s brother, Jonathan Hernandez, who later wrote a memoir about their robust childhood, only a few miles from the place Brutcher lured cops to their deaths.
Practically 20 years after their on-field partnership, Hernandez and Brutcher are each useless after committing horrific murders.
Brutcher killed Sgt. Dustin Demonte, 35, and Officer Alex Hamzy, 34, and criticially wounded Officer Alec Iurato, 26, on October 12.
Brutcher — who repeatedly posed on-line with weapons, even at a marriage — was killed by police on the scene. The motive for Brutcher’s killings stays unknown.
In the meantime, Hernandez hanged himself in 2017 on the Massachusetts jail the place he was serving life with out the potential for parole for killing his one-time pal Odin Lloyd in June 2013.
Days earlier than his dying at age 27, Hernandez had been acquitted of the double slaying of two individuals who had been shot in a 2012 drive-by taking pictures. An post-mortem discovered he had been smoking a copious quantity of K2, a type of artificial marijuana, simply earlier than he died.
Lloyd was a semiprofessional soccer participant who was courting the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée.
Since his suicide, books and documentaries have examined the participant’s double life that led him to commit homicide quickly after signing a $40 million contract extension with the Patriots.
These near him pointed to his secret love life with males — in addition to the brain scan that revealed severe brain injuries according to persistent traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
That got here from enjoying soccer, with Hernandez already struggling severe blows for the Rams, the crew he performed on alongside Brutcher, in response to his brother’s memoir and witnesses from the time.
“I noticed him get hit, and I noticed him go down. And he didn’t get again up,” Lorrie Belmonte, a registered nurse in Bristol, previously told the Boston Globe.
However ultimately “Aaron would all the time get again up,” she stated, recalling one time when he was taken away in an ambulance.
It was not instantly clear if Brutcher continued enjoying after 2004.
Nevertheless, by Wednesday, he had change into a beer-drinking, divorced dad of two who was generally known as the “rowdy one” in his Bristol-based household.
