Family of Aaron Hernandez Found Out Death Details on Twitter: Lawyer

Impossibly, the life and death of former NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez is becoming ever more tragic. His longtime lawyer now alleges that his family got information about his suicide earlier this week via “salacious details on Twitter.”

According to Courthouse News Service, lawyer George Leontire said to Judge Thomas McGuire on Friday that these actions “violate every code of decency.”

“We are getting [all our information] from the media, and the media is getting it from sources who are government officials,” Leontire said during a hearing on an injunction to preserve evidence surrounding the former New England Patriot’s suicide earlier in the week.

He added, “We read in a press release that there were suicide notes. No one has called us about those suicide notes. We don’t know what those notes say.”

Leontire also noted that Hernandez was able to hang himself with a bed sheet in his cell because no one checked on him between 8 p.m. and 3:03 a.m.

CNN reports that the Hernandez estate will most likely sue state officials for negligence.

“Someone needs to answer for how this family has been treated,” said Leontire.

Judge McGuire issued an order specifying the items that need to be preserved, including video recordings of Hernandez’s cell; all of his property; photographs of the scene after his body was found; the state medical examiner’s autopsy results; and recordings of telephone calls he made up to 30 days before he died.

In other Hernandez news, his family has also successfully petitioned to have his brain donated to science.

Time magazine reports that Hernandez’s brain will be released to researchers from Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center for a study about possible brain trauma, or CTE.

Hernandez’s family accused officials of refusing to release it, despite turning over the rest of his body to a funeral home on Thursday.

On Friday District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. released a statement saying, “Now that the cause and manner of death have been determined, the brain will be released … as Mr. Hernandez’s family wishes.”