Angels: Former employee sentenced in death of Tyler Skaggs

FORT WORTH, Texas – A former Los Angeles Angels employee was convicted Thursday of providing Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs with the drugs that led to his overdose death in Texas.

Eric Kay was convicted of one count of drug distribution resulting in death and drug conspiracy. He faces life in prison when he is sentenced on June 28.

Skaggs’ widow, Carli, and her mother, Debbie Hetman, embraced as the verdict was announced. Kay took off his jacket and tie and handcuffed him, nodding to her family and friends in the courtroom.

A jury of 10 women and two men reached the verdict after deliberating for no more than three hours and following an eight-day trial. Kay was tried in federal court in Fort Worth, about 15 miles from where the Angels were supposed to open a four-game series against the Texas Rangers on July 1, 2019, the day Skaggs was found dead in a room. hotel in suburban Dallas.

Kay’s attorney, Michael Molfetta, declined to comment after the verdict was read.

A coroner’s report said Skaggs, 27, had choked on her vomit and had a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone in her system.

The trial included testimony from five major league players who said they received oxycodone pills from Kay on various occasions between 2017 and 2019, the years Kay was accused of obtaining pills and giving them to players. Kay also used drugs, according to testimony and court documents.

The pitcher matt harveywho shot to stardom with the New York Mets nearly a decade ago, said he knew he was threatening his career by admitting to using cocaine in New York and California.

Harvey, one of the players who said he received oxycodone pills from Kay but also got them for Skaggs, said he was subpoenaed and testified only because he was granted immunity from prosecution. Harvey is unsigned after pitching for Baltimore last season.

In closing arguments, lead prosecutor Lindsey Beran said the government proved that Kay was the only one who could have given Skaggs the drugs that led to his death, that the delivery was in Texas, and that fentanyl was the cause of death. death. The government argued that Kay gave Skaggs counterfeit oxycodone pills that contained fentanyl.

Beran reminded the jury of the testimony of Harvey and his fellow Major League pitchers, cam bedrosian and Blake Parker, saying that Skaggs’ death scared them away from oxycodone use. Harvey testified that the pain reliever was commonly used in a league where players often face surgeries and deal with injuries.

“Blake Parker, ‘I had a flashback to 2017 and I thought it could have been me,'” Beran told the jury, quoting the pitcher. “All of those people were one pill away from dying alone in a hotel room from a drug that Eric Kay gave them.”

Molfetta said prosecutors did not prove that Kay gave Skaggs the drugs after the team landed in Texas on a flight from California, or that fentanyl was the sole cause.

Molfetta pointed to a whiteboard that prosecutors said presented their case. It was filled with magnetic tiles showing text messages between Skaggs and Kay, and departure and arrival times along with other items from June 30 and July 1.

“Those mosaics, these things that they’ve put in there, they don’t prove anything other than what’s in the mosaics,” Molfetta said. “There are so many assumptions behind this.”

Kay served as the team’s PR contact on many road trips, and the trip to Texas was her first since returning from rehab. Kay was placed on leave shortly after Skaggs’s death and never returned to the team. He did not testify.

Defense attorneys acknowledged that Kay lied to police the day Skaggs was found dead, saying she hadn’t seen him the night before. One of her colleagues at the time, current Angels communications director Adam Chodzko, said Kay confided in him a couple of weeks later that she had been in Skaggs’ hotel room. Chodzko testified that Kay told him that she did not give Skaggs pills that night and refused an offer from Skaggs to do drugs in the room.

Carli Skaggs testified that she did not know the extent of her husband’s drug use and that she would have tried to do something about it if she had known.

Hetman testified that her son had problems with Percocet, a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen, in 2013, but that he abruptly stopped at that time.

Garet Ramos, Skaggs’ half-brother, testified that he couldn’t remember the details of trying to help Skaggs leave Percocet nine years ago and denied deleting text messages from his phone at the Southlake police department, the suburb where he was found dead. to Skaggs.

The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified that there was a “higher probability” that fentanyl, which is significantly more potent than oxycodone, caused Skaggs’ death. Dr. Marc Krouse also said there was a “reduced probability” that alcohol and oxycodone caused death. A government expert said fentanyl almost certainly caused Skaggs’ death.