Cops in Gainesville called it “the procession.” Every Saturday night, hordes of people spilled out of the clubs and made their way down University Avenue, stopping here, stopping there, partying, fighting, causing trouble for three blocks, five blocks, or more. It was not unusual for thirty or forty cops to occupy a two-to-three-block area, babysitting the college students for hours on end, doing all that they could to get the kids home and keep them safe until Sunday morning.
Now, on the last Saturday in September of 2007, with school back in session, the procession was back in full force.
The day had gone badly for Florida—the Gators had lost 20-17 to the Auburn Tigers. Aaron Hernandez had played in the game and needed to blow off steam afterward. That night, he went to a nightclub called Venue.
Venue was a relatively new club in Gainesville, but it had already become a favorite with UF’s football players. Previously, it had been some other club. Before that it had been something else—a restaurant called Shakers. Students came and went, no one remembered. But what Aaron Hernandez knew, as a regular participant in the procession, was that when the doors closed, at two in the morning, the crowd would regroup in a parking lot behind the building. Sometimes there were fights.
Sometimes, arrests were made.
It was not the place a player as volatile as Aaron should have been. Certainly not on a day where the game had gone badly. But, try as he did to keep an eye out for his teammate, Tim Tebow couldn’t be there for every minute of Aaron’s life. And tonight, a former Gator named Reggie Nelson was back in town.
Nelson was in the NFL now—he’d been the Jacksonville Jaguars’ first pick in that year’s draft. Down from Jacksonville, he was riding high in Venue’s VIP booth. Chris Harris, who had been drafted by the Chicago Bears in 2005, was with him. Mike and Maurkice Pouncey were also there, along with several other players and soon-to-be players.
A bouncer named Antwuan Hamm would recall that Nelson had not been seen at Venue for some time. But Hamm had already gotten to know the Pounceys, who were there all the time and—according to the bouncer—always spoiling for a fight. They weren’t the only ones. A local man named Justin Glass had also gone to Venue that night. He had brought two friends along to the club: a man named Randall Cason and an older friend, Corey Smith, whose nickname was “Squirt.”
Squirt had two kids, a good job, and a white Crown Vic. There was nothing thuggish about him. In fact, he had taken Glass under his wing and done his best to keep him off the streets. But Glass was caught between Squirt, the good father, and Cason, who was more of a negative influence.
According to Gainesville PD, Cason and Glass had gone to the club looking for trouble.
Neither man wanted to listen to anything Squirt had to say.
According to Randall Cason, everything that followed stemmed from an incident that had taken place the previous week—an altercation Cason’s brother had gotten into with several UF football players. Now, in the dark, crowded club, Cason found himself in the middle of a similar altercation.
Words were exchanged, and menacing glances. A football player reached out and tried to grab a chain Cason was wearing around his neck—but the chain was too thick to break.
Reggie Nelson would say that, when he arrived at the club, Aaron Hernandez told him about an incident involving the Pouncey twins: according to Aaron, Cason had snatched a chain away from one of the Pounceys.
According to Hamm, the club bouncer, it was Justin Glass—and not Cason—who got into a confrontation with the Pounceys. Hamm would say that one of the twins approached Glass and said, “I want my motherfucking chain.”
“What chain?” Glass had replied. “I ain’t got no damn chain.”
At that point, Hamm said, club security escorted both of the Pouncey twins out of the club. Having done so, they also ejected Glass.
The Pouncey twins would say that, afterward, out in the club parking lot, a “black man” who had snatched a chain away from Mike Pouncey had taunted them, tugging at his shirt as if to indicate to the Gators that he had a gun in his waistband.
The accounts contradict one another, to an extent. But the involved parties seem to agree that Reggie Nelson stepped in to defuse the increasingly tense situation, getting in between the Pouncey twins and the locals.
Nelson knew Cason socially. Trying to broker a peace, he told Cason that the players didn’t want any trouble.
Cason told him that the chain had already been given away.
Cason and Nelson ended up shaking hands and hugging. Then, Cason and his friends took off in Squirt’s car. The football players took off in their own cars. Aaron Hernandez went with them.
The whole affair might have ended then and there, peacefully.
But, as it turned out, the night was just starting.