After famously playing the character who shot Ricky Baker in the 1991 film "Boyz n the Hood," Lloyd Avery II was found guilty of killing two people over a drug debt in 1999.
Columbia PicturesLloyd Avery II in Boyz n the Hood (1991).
In one of the most iconic scenes in the 1991 John Singleton film Boyz n the Hood, Ricky Baker, played by Morris Chestnut, is shot and killed by a gangster, played by Lloyd Avery II. Though Avery had fewer than 10 lines of dialogue in the hit film, his intensity and grit made him stand out. Sadly, his real life would come to mirror his Boyz n the Hood role.
A Los Angeles native with a working class but privileged background, Avery seemed like a promising young actor poised to enjoy success in Hollywood. But as Avery’s acting career struggled to take off, he increasingly turned to a life of crime. In the late 1990s, he began to live a real-life version of the gangsters he portrayed on screen, becoming involved with L.A. gangs.
His descent into criminal activity culminated in a double homicide in 1999, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2000. Though Avery turned to Christianity in prison, his determination to try and convert his Satanist cellmate, Kevin Roby, had deadly results.
This is the sad story of Lloyd Avery II, the promising young actor whose real-life descent into a life of crime lead to his murder at the age of just 36.
A Privileged Beginning In Los Angeles
Tikco DixonLloyd Avery II as a child.
Lloyd Fernandez Avery was born on June 21, 1969, in Los Angeles, California. His father, Lloyd Avery Sr., was a plumber, electrician, and carpenter. His mother, Linda Avery, was a stay-at-home mom for Avery and his three siblings. She eventually returned to work as a bank employee.
Avery grew up in View Park, a working-class neighborhood next to Baldwin Hills — which was also known as “Black Beverly Hills.” Growing up there, Avery lived a very comfortable life.
He attended Beverly Hills High School, where he played varsity water polo and baseball. Fairly popular in high school, Avery was known for his sense of humor and good looks. However, he also showed another side of his personality at weekend house parties. There, he was known for stealing small items from his classmates’ homes.
Indeed, those closest to him remarked that he had two sides to his personality. Lloyd Avery II was both very warm and a troublemaker.
Tikco DixonThe Avery family.
“He had a mischievous streak and a really sweet streak,” Brent Rollins, the art director and graphic designer who created the logo for Boyz n the Hood told LEVEL in 2021. “The day before Christmas Eve, he would drive around to people’s houses to give them Christmas cards. Who does that?”
But Avery’s sense of humor lead to his first run-in with the law. In 1988, he and some friends were leaving a party at UCLA when they passed a group of frat boys. Avery cracked a joke, a fight ensued, and someone started firing a gun. It wasn’t Avery, but he was subsequently arrested for carrying a fake ID. As a result, he spent three days in jail — something that Avery laughed off.
“What scared me was that Lloyd was laughing about it,” Keith Davis, Avery’s friend told LEVEL. “He told me that he really liked jail. It’s like, how the hell do you get locked up and you just enjoy it? He was so flippant.”
Though Avery wanted to become a musician, the chance to be an actor landed in his lap in the 1990s. His friend John Singleton was making a movie — and wanted Avery to be in it. Lloyd Avery II agreed, not knowing that his small part in Boyz n the Hood would transform his life.
How Boyz N The Hood Launched Lloyd Avery II’s Acting Career
Columbia PicturesThe iconic scene in Boyz n the Hood where Lloyd Avery II’s character shoots and kills Ricky Baker, played by Morris Chestnut.
Lloyd Avery II had a small but vital part in Boyz n the Hood. His character, a Blood gang member known only as “Knucklehead #2”, shoots and kills a star football player named Ricky. The moment Avery raises his sawed-off shotgun to kill Ricky is one of the film’s most iconic moments.
It also seemed to mark the beginning of a promising acting career. Avery, six-foot-one and handsome, was cast in Singleton’s next film Poetic Justice.
Columbia Pictures Lloyd Avery II in Poetic Justice (1993).
Though he had just a bit part — and though Poetic Justice was a cinematic flop — Avery continued to act in the 1990s and was hired for small parts in a handful of films. But he found that life as an actor wasn’t easy.
Boyz n the Hood had fallen into his lap, but other acting gigs were tough to book. One casting director complained that Avery didn’t prepare well for auditions, and sometimes didn’t show up at all. Meanwhile, though Singleton’s star was rising, he and Avery were on increasingly bad terms.
In the face of this disappointment, Lloyd Avery II started to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
Fans knew Avery as a “Blood.” And Avery seemed to start seeing himself that way too. A friend of Avery’s recalled a moment when someone asked if Avery was a Blood in real life. To the friend’s shock, Avery said yes.
Soon, Lloyd Avery II started living as the character he’d played in the movies.
A Bizarre Transition To A Real Life Of Crime
Waterline PicturesLloyd Avery II as G-Ride in the 2001 film Shot.
Shortly after Boyz n the Hood came out, Lloyd Avery II moved to the “Jungle,” a “Bloods” neighborhood in Los Angeles. Avery loved how people treated him there — he was a legend to many Jungle locals. But Avery’s embrace of the gangster lifestyle isolated him from many of his friends.
Then on July 1, 1999, Avery stepped deeper into this lifestyle when he allegedly shot two people — Annette Lewis and Percy Branch — while attempting to collect a drug debt. The crime went unsolved for months, during which time Avery’s behavior became increasingly erratic.
He had altercations with members of the Nation of Islam, moved out of the Jungle, and booked an acting role for a movie called Lockdown, which took him to New Mexico. There, Avery was caught smoking a “sherm stick” (which can invoke a reaction similar to PCP), tried to attack a makeup artist, broke into a live prison, and was eventually asked to leave the state.
Columbia PicturesAvery in Lockdown (2000) in which he plays a drug-addicted prison inmate.
Back in Los Angeles, however, Lloyd Avery II tried to devote himself to acting. He went to auditions, wrote his own script, and even nabbed a substantial acting role: the gangster character of G-Ride in the 2001 film Shot.
But though Avery impressed the film’s director, both with his abilities as actor and his frequent threats, his possible involvement with Lewis and Branch’s murder started to catch up to him. Shortly after filming Shot, the Los Angeles Police Department charged Avery with double homicide.
Since then, critiques of the police investigation of the crime and witness statements have surfaced — and even Branch told the police that Avery was not the shooter before he died. But whatever the truth, Lloyd Avery II didn’t fight for his freedom during his trial. He offered up only a weak alibi and, in December 2000, he was sentenced to life in prison.
How Kevin Roby Killed Lloyd Avery II In A Bloody Satanic Ritual
Lloyd Avery II was imprisoned at at Pelican Bay State Prison in northwest California. There, he decided to dedicate himself to Christianity.
But in 2005, Avery got a new cellmate: Kevin Roby, a Satanist who had raped two of his sisters and murdered one of them, according to the Los Angeles Times. Avery, an evangelical, saw Roby as a spiritual project.
California Department of Corrections and RehabilitationKevin Roby, convicted murderer, rapist, who killed cellmate Lloyd Avery.
“I know God has him around me for a reason,” Avery wrote to Dennis Clark, the chaplain he met while awaiting trial, in a letter dated August 29, 2005. “He knows very well that I am a devout Christian, and I pray for him to the Lord every day that he gives his life to God.”
But Roby didn’t want to be converted. And on Sept. 4, 2005, Roby strangled Avery to death following a religious argument in their cell. A subsequent autopsy found that Avery had died from blood in his lungs and from blunt force trauma on his head. He was 36 years old.
“He was pushing his agenda to convert me to Christianity, which led to us fighting,” Roby told the podcast Criminal Perspective in 2020.
After strangling Avery, Roby hid his body under the covers of his bed where he remained for the next two days. On Sept 6., Roby drew a pentagram into the floor with Avery’s blood and placed his body in the middle of it. At that point, prison guards realized what had happened.
No charges were ever filed against Roby, who was already serving life in prison. Instead, Lloyd Avery II’s friends, family, and co-workers have lamented the tragic end of his life — after such a promising start.
“When I think back on Lloyd, I think it’s one of the greatest missed opportunities,” Roger Roth, the writer and director of Shot, told LEVEL. “Had he been able to control himself and not commit a double murder, there is no doubt he would have been a big success.”
After reading about Lloyd Avery II, dive into the story of Aaron Hernandez, the NFL player who likely committed multiple murders in the early 2010s. Then, read about the brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in Los Angeles and why many people believe O.J. Simpson is responsible.
