27-year-old Odin Lloyd was murdered in June, and former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez and two others are in custody facing charges related to the slaying.
Not a whole lot about Lloyd is known. We know that he played for a semi-pro football team called the Boston Bandits. We know that he dated the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins. we know that Lloyd and Hernandez hung out independent of their girlfriends.
What’s unclear is what Lloyd did for a living. We know he played for free for the semi-pro team, and friends say he still had dreams of one day playing in the NFL. There is suspicion that he was a drug dealer. Jenkins told police that she knew Lloyd smoked marijuana and was a marijuana dealer.
If Lloyd was a dealer, then he was a poor one.
ABC News looked into Lloyd’s connection to Hernandez, and they say friends described Lloyd as poor. According to ABC:
Friends said Lloyd couldn’t afford a car and would bike 20 miles to make it to Bandits games. There were also times, friends said, that the talented linebacker couldn’t even afford a uniform and would wear jerseys with other players’ names on them.
Lloyd’s coach with the Bandits, Mike Branch, was adamant to ABC that Lloyd had nothing to do with drugs.
“He wasn’t a drug dealer,” Branch told ABC. “[If] you [are] a drug dealer, you ain’t riding a bike to practice, you know?”
If Lloyd dealt, then maybe he was a low-level dealer just starting out. Drugs may have provided a connection between the two men. In addition to failing drug tests in college, Hernandez and/or his associates may have been involved in the drug scene. Recall that police seized equipment typically used by drug dealers when they searched Hernandez’s home earlier this month.
Curious about a potential motive for the killing? This might be the answer.
