Former New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez, who was serving life without parole for murder, committed suicide Wednesday morning in prison, the Massachusetts Department of Correction said in a statement.
Hernandez, who was sentenced for the fatal 2013 shooting of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd, was found hanged in his cell at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts around 3:05 a.m., according to the statement.
Hernandez “attempted to block his door from the inside by jamming the door with various items,” the statement added. Corrections officers attempted to revive him and transported him to UMass Leominster, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.
Christopher Fallon, a spokesman for the correction department, told the Boston Globe that investigators had not found a suicide note and that Hernandez had not previously been considered at risk of harming himself.
The statement said state police were investigating the scene and that his family members were notified.
Hernandez was acquitted last week of two other murders, the Boston Globe reported, though the case did not affect the ongoing life sentence he received in 2015. Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado were shot and killed in 2012, and prosecutors argued that Hernandez had pulled the trigger.
According to the Globe, Patriots spokesman Stacey James said in an email that the Patriots team was aware of Hernandez’s death but that he didn’t “anticipate that we will be commenting today.’’