Aaron Hernandez's Fiancée Sues Patriots And NFL Over 'Severe' CTE

Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez, the fiancée of the late New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez, is suing both the team as well as the National Football League for failing to alert him to the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma.

“Aaron had stage 3 CTE usually seen in players with a median age of death of 67 years,” said the suit, which was filed in Massachusetts on behalf of the couple’s daughter, Avielle Janelle Hernandez. TMZ reported Thursday that the suit claims both the NFL and the Patriots knew that there was a correlation between suicide and CTE and did not alert Hernandez.

The NFL and Patriots “were fully aware of the damage that could be inflicted from repetitive impact injuries and failed to disclose, treat or protect him from the dangers of such damage,” the suit claims. The lawsuit seeks “redress for the loss of parental consortium she has experienced based on the negligent conduct of Defendants that deprived her of the companionship and society of her father, Aaron Hernandez.”

During a press Thursday conference, Hernandez’s lawyer Jose Baez announced the results of posthumous CTE testing and claimed the star athlete had “the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron’s age.”

It was announced in April that Hernandez’s brain would be donated to CTE research. The brain was later examined by Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and director of the CTE Center at Boston University, who later found that the player had Stage 3 CTE, with Stage 4 being the highest.

Hernandez, 27, died by suicide April 19 in his prison cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, where he was serving a life sentence for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd. Shortly before his death, Hernandez was acquitted of murdering Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado outside a Boston nightclub in July 2012.