What Happened to Lloyd Avery? The ‘Boyz N the Hood’ Actor’s Tragic Fate Revealed

Whether or not you've seen the '90s classic Boyz n the Hood in its entirety, one of the film's final scenes is embedded in pop culture. During the scene, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character, Tre, screams "Rickyyy!" as the character in question, Ricky Baker, played by Morris Chestnut, literally runs for his life throughout the Los Angeles, Calif. projects.

Spoiler Alert! Unfortunately, Ricky doesn't survive the car chase and is shot to death by a member of the infamous LA Blood gang. The image of the person who shot him, Knucklehead #2, is a piercing one. In the character's scene, he shoots Ricky from the passenger side of a car and brutally stares at Ricky as he shoots him in the back.

While Knucklehead #2 doesn't say much in Boyz n the Hood, the scene made the actor behind the character, Lloyd Avery II, a rising star. Sadly, Lloyd's acting career and life were tragically cut short. Here's what happened.

Shortly following the success from Boyz n the Hood, Lloyd's life tragically imitated the art he created. In July 1999, he fatally shot two people, Annette Lewis and Percy Branch. According to All That's Interesting.com, Lloyd killed them during a shoot out while he was collecting a drug debt. The killings reportedly went unsolved for months as his acting career expanded. Several weeks after the shootings, he booked a movie called Lockdown, which took him to New Mexico.

Lloyd's time on the set of Lockdown was later described as "erratic," as he was accused of taking illicit drugs, and allegedly tried to attack a makeup artist, broke into a live prison, and was eventually asked to leave the state. According to Chicago Defender, he went on to film another movie before police eventually arrested him in December 1999 outside of his grandmother's Beverly Hills home. Lloyd then received a trial in December 2000, and was sentenced to life in prison in Pelican Bay State Prison in northwest California.

While serving his life sentence in Pelican Bay State Prison, Lloyd searched for ways to get his life back on track. He reconnected with his Christianity and eventually earned the nickname "Baby Jesus." Unfortunately, Lloyd's prison cellmate, Kevin Roby, wasn't fond of his religion.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Roby, who identified as a Satanist, was serving time for raping two of his sisters and murdered one of them. Lloyd reportedly saw his cellmate as a challenge sent to him by God.

"I know God has him around me for a reason,” Lloyd wrote to a chaplain in a letter shared with All That's Interesting. "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.”

The actor allegedly tried to convince Roby to convert to Christianity for awhile before the inmate grew tired of what he had to say. In September 2005, Roby strangled Lloyd 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.

Since his death, many people in Lloyd's life have shared that who he was in his final years wasn't representative of the person he was. The actor grew up in a middle class neighborhood before he moved to the "Jungle" in South Los Angeles, Calif. and became a Blood, affiliated with the Black P-Stone set, similar to how he was in the movie. According to his brother, Che Avery's interview with King magazine, Lloyd became blinded by the realities of thug life.

"I like to call it the Tupac Syndrome,” Che said. "He felt he had something to prove when he really didn’t. Even if you have money and fame, you will sacrifice all of that just to have respect from a bunch of thugs?”