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Cousin of key witness testifies
Supports man’s claim that he was shot in face by Hernandez
photos by Chris Christo/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool
Boston Police Detective Paul MacIsaac (left) testified about a reenactment video (above) of the double shooting that Aaron Hernandez is on trial for.
By Travis Andersen
Globe Staff

The star prosecution witness in the double murder trial of Aaron Hernandez angrily told a cousin that the former New England Patriots player “shot me in the eye’’ several months after the killings, according to testimony Friday.

Alexander Bradley called his cousin, Robert Lindsey, on Feb. 14, 2013, and used anti-gay and racial slurs when he said Hernandez shot him the day before, Lindsey testified Friday in Suffolk Superior Court.

“He told me ... excuse my language, ‘this [expletives deleted] Aaron shot me in the eye,’’’ Lindsey said.

Lindsey said Bradley instructed him to inform Brooke Wilcox, the mother of Bradley’s child, that he had been shot.

Wilcox “broke down crying,’’ Lindsey testified.

Hernandez, 27, has pleaded not guilty to charges of killing Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in a drive-by shooting on July 16, 2012, in Boston’s South End.

He has also pleaded not guilty to a witness intimidation charge for allegedly shooting Bradley, his former friend and marijuana supplier, in Florida to silence him about the killings.

Jose Baez, a lawyer for Hernandez, asked Lindsey on cross examination if he knew Bradley was a large-scale drug trafficker.

“I guess,’’ Lindsey said. “I know he [deals] with it ... like, big guys.’’

Baez also asserted that an unidentified cousin texted Bradley after he was shot and urged him to “get all that money’’ from Hernandez.

Bradley, who initially told police he didn’t know who shot him, sued Hernandez for damages in June 2013, and they later settled for an undisclosed sum.

The defense has portrayed Bradley as a violent drug dealer who shot de Abreu and Furtado over a botched drug transaction.

Bradley, currently jailed in Connecticut for an unrelated nightclub shooting, testified for prosecutors last week under an immunity deal. He said he was behind the wheel of Hernandez’s Toyota 4Runner when the athlete leaned across him from the front passenger seat and fired five shots into the victims’ BMW.

Jurors also heard Friday from Boston police Detective Paul MacIsaac, who tussled with Baez over a reenactment video of the double murder that police filmed in the 4Runner, based on Bradley’s account.

In the video, an officer roughly the size of Hernandez leaned across a detective in the driver’s seat, sticking his arm and torso out the window.

Baez asked MacIsaac, who shot the clip, if he had any training in forensic video reconstruction. No, MacIsaac said.

“So you guys are just doing a little playacting,’’ Baez said, prompting an objection from prosecutors.

He also noted that while the officer playing Hernandez is approximately his size, the detective in the driver’s seat is smaller than Bradley.

MacIsaac said the detective weighs 208 pounds, about 50 pounds less than Bradley on the night of the killings, though he has a “stocky’’ build.

Baez lampooned the video, saying the detective appeared to be sleeping in the clip.

“Did Mr. Bradley tell you he was lying there taking a nap like [the detective] is?’’ Baez asked.

MacIsaac said the detective, who was in a reclining position in the driver’s seat to match Bradley’s statement that he pushed the seat back for Hernandez, had his eyes open.

“I just saw him blink,’’ Baez quipped.

The 4Runner vanished after the killings, and police recovered it nearly a year later in a garage belonging to Hernandez’s cousin in Bristol, Conn.

MacIsaac testified Friday that the car had a layer of dust and cobwebs on it.

He also shed light on the moment when investigators began to focus on Hernandez’s tattoos, which have figured prominently at trial.

MacIsaac said a photo of Hernandez on the field at the Super Bowl in February 2012 tipped investigators to the possible relevance of gun tattoos in the case.

Hernandez got a tattoo in the spring of 2013 on his right forearm depicting a six-shot revolver cylinder with one empty chamber, near the phrase “God Forgives’’ written backwards.

The revolver tattoo is “clearly not there’’ in the Super Bowl photo, when Hernandez was speaking on his cellphone with his arm exposed, Mac-Isaac said.

That realization prompted investigators to make a public appeal in 2014 for the identity of the artist who etched those markings on Hernandez.

The artist, David Nelson, testified earlier this month that Hernandez got the revolver and God Forgives tats, as well as markings of handgun muzzles and a spent shell casing, on his arm at Nelson’s then-shop in Hermosa Beach, Calif., in the spring of 2013.

Prosecutors contend the tattoos are tantamount to an admission of guilt, an assertion defense lawyers have ridiculed throughout the trial.

Hernandez is already serving a life sentence for the June 2013 fatal shooting of Odin Lloyd. An appeal of his first-degree murder conviction in that case will be heard at a later date.

Prosecutors also called Dr. Katherine Lindstrom on Friday from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

She said de Abreu died from “gunshot wounds [to] the chest’’ and “could have survived from seconds to a matter of minutes.’’

Furtado, she said, was killed by “gunshot wounds [to] the head and right shoulder.’’ He would have survived for “seconds, maybe not even that.’’

The trial resumes Monday.

Travis Andersen can be reached at tandersen@globe.com.