Pack's Cobb a donor backer

GREEN BAY Packers wide receiver Randall Cobb is trying to raise awareness of organ donation.

The 24-year-old is the public face of a 14-week effort by Froedtert Hospital and Gannett Wisconsin Media to help draw attention to the need for organ donors, according to Press-Gazette Media.

According to the Wisconsin Donor Network, more than 2,300 people are on waiting lists for an organ transplant in Wisconsin. There are more than 123,000, nationally.

Cobb, who has been a donor since the age of 16, met transplant patients last week during a tour of the hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Meeting patients put his efforts in perspective, he said.

"It makes me realize how important this is at a higher level," Cobb said. "I've always felt helping people is important, but when you see the impact you can have on somebody's life, it makes it more obvious how important organ donations are."

The push coincides with a nationwide effort in April intended to draw attention to the need for additional organ donors.

Four hospitals in the state perform organ transplants: Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center; Children's Hospital of Wisconsin; Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin; and the University of Wisconsin Hospital transplant program in Madison.

Candee Biesterveld, of Kaukauna, met Cobb as he toured the hospital. She received a kidney transplant from a living donor in January and was elated to see Cobb joining the effort to raise awareness.

"We need to get people to know live donors can give kidneys," she told Cobb while standing in her hospital room.

* Jurors in the murder trial of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez are expected to begin deliberations this week in Fall River, Mass., after hearing more than 2 months of testimony.

Hernandez, 25, had a $40 million contract with the Patriots and was a rising star with the team when he was accused of killing Odin Lloyd. Lloyd, 27, was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee and was found shot to death on June 17, 2013, in an industrial park less than a mile from Hernandez's North Attleborough home.

Police almost immediately zeroed in on Hernandez after finding keys to an SUV he had rented in Lloyd's pocket.

Prosecutors say Hernandez orchestrated the killing.

They say he summoned two friends from Connecticut on Father's Day 2013, drove a rented silver Nissan Altima to Lloyd's home in Boston, picked him up in the middle of the night and drove him to the industrial park, where one of the three men shot Lloyd six times.

While prosecutors presented no witnesses of the shooting and never found the murder weapon, cellphone records showed the men communicating with Lloyd that night. Surveillance video along the way showed Hernandez driving the Nissan shortly before Lloyd's sister saw him get into a silver car, a moment captured on a neighbor's security camera. Soon after, a toll booth camera caught the Nissan leaving Boston, while Lloyd's phone pinged several cell towers before stopping in North Attleborough for good.

Surveillance video at Hernandez's home showed him holding a black item that appeared to be a gun minutes after workers at the industrial park heard gunshots. A joint found near Lloyd's body had Hernandez's and Lloyd's DNA on it.

Prosecutors never presented a motive.