In Bristol in the 1990s, he was known as the football-playing son of Dennis Hernandez, a local sports hero who had been a decorated athlete at the University of Connecticut. He was a custodian in Bristol, but around the city he was known as the King.

Friends and teammates of Mr. Hernandez said that his father was uncomfortable about some of his son’s rough-and-tumble associates in Bristol and kept him on a tight leash, especially as Mr. Hernandez became a pass-catching star at Bristol Central High School.

But in 2006, Dennis Hernandez died from complications of hernia surgery. In interviews with newspapers at the time, Aaron’s mother, Terri, said that she worried that Aaron would lose the direction in his life that his father had provided.

By then he was smashing state high school records and attracting the attention of college football recruiters nationwide. To most everyone in town, it was also obvious he began running with a rougher crowd, people he kept in touch with even as he moved on to Florida and, later, the Patriots.

In his freshman year at Florida, while still 17, Mr. Hernandez got into a fight with a bouncer at a bar. He received deferred prosecution after being charged as a juvenile. In the fall of that year, The Orlando Sentinel reported that Mr. Hernandez was questioned by the police about a shooting that injured two men. Friends from Connecticut were with Mr. Hernandez that night, The Sentinel reported.

As a sophomore, he was suspended for the season-opening game. Mr. Hernandez later acknowledged that he had tested positive for marijuana. But by Mr. Hernandez’s junior year, Florida Coach Urban Meyer was saying that his player had been rehabilitated. Mr. Meyer had led him in daily Bible study sessions.

N.F.L. teams were not swayed. Once considered a top pick, Mr. Hernandez, then 20, fell to the Patriots in the fourth round, and his selection was viewed as a risky move. There were reports that he had failed multiple drug tests.