Who Was Odin Lloyd?
Just like Aaron Hernandez, Odin Lloyd played football to escape from a tough background.
But while Hernandez would go on to sign a $40 million contract extension to play in the NFL, Lloyd struggled to pay the dues to his semi-pro team. As the New York Times reported, hard-hitting linebacker, he sometimes played in teammates’ jerseys, because he couldn’t afford his own.
Friends and loved ones said Lloyd was a funny and respectful guy, who never relinquished his high school role of class clown.
On Wednesday, Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder in Lloyd’s death.
The two first met ten months before the murder in a Gillette Stadium skybox for Lloyd’s girlfriend’s birthday party, a literal guest to the NFL world he always dreamed to be a part of.
The former New England Patriot had reserved the skybox for the birthday of Shaneah Jenkins, who was Lloyd’s girlfriend and the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee. Lloyd and Hernandez became friends by attending Jenkins family gatherings and hanging out in Hernandez’s basement “man cave.’’
Now, Hernandez is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, while Lloyd will be known to most simply as Hernandez’s victim. But his friends and family say he was much more.
Lloyd was born on November 14, 1985 in St. Croix in the West Indies, but grew up on Fayston Street in a rough, crime-plagued Dorchester neighborhood. People said he was more likely to be on the streets playing football than doing anything else.
“His talent was off the charts,’’ Lloyd’s high school defensive coach, Mike Branch, told ESPN. “I could see something special in the kid. If football was something that could get him out of the hood and into college, that was my goal.’’
After high school, Lloyd left to attend Delaware State University and play football for the Division I football team. When his financial aid didn’t go through and he ran out of money, Lloyd let friends know he was coming back to Dorchester.
With no college degree or car, he took a job climbing poles for a power company, before switching to landscaping. Meanwhile, he played for the Boston Bandits, the local semi-pro football team.
He started playing linebacker for the team in 2007, sometimes wearing jerseys with other players’ names on the back, when he couldn’t afford the $75 team dues. He rode his bike to practice.
When he first met Hernandez, he didn’t mention that he played football.
“He didn’t want to make it like he was a groupie, that he was trying to use him in any way,’’ a Bandits teammate told the New York Times.
Hernandez began visiting Lloyd in Dorchester and let Lloyd borrow his rented Chevy Suburban. Prosecutors never spelled out exactly how the relationship soured.
When mourners began visiting Fayston Street after his death, Lloyd’s family displayed his high school trophies on the rail of their porch.
“A lot of people won’t see from the outside the value and the riches he had,’’ Lloyd’s uncle said Wednesday in court. “It wasn’t material, the wealth he possessed.’’
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