DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF) – A former Los Angeles Angels employee was charged on Friday with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in connection with the 2019 overdose death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
According to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Erin Nealy Cox, former Angels Communications Director Eric Prescott Kay was charged via criminal complaint with conspiracy to distribute a mixture containing detectable amounts of fentanyl. He was arrested in Fort Worth and made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey L. Cureton at the Mahon Federal Courthouse Friday morning.
According to the criminal complaint filed on July 30 and unsealed Friday, the investigation began on July 1, 2019, when the Southlake Police Department received a 911 call stating that Mr. Skaggs, then 27-years-old, had been found dead in his hotel room at the Southlake Town Square Hilton. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office later determined that Skaggs had a mixture of ethanol, fentanyl, and oxycodone in his system at the time of his death. It was later found that but for the fentanyl, Mr. Skaggs would not have died.
According to Cox, investigators discovered a number of pills inside Skaggs’ room, including a single blue pill with the markings M/30. An analysis of the pill, which Cox said closely resembled a 30-milligram oxycodone tablet, revealed it had been laced with fentanyl.
In an initial interview with law enforcement, Cox said Kay allegedly denied knowing whether Skaggs was a drug user. He claimed the last time he’d seen Mr. Skaggs was at hotel check-in on June 30. However, a search of Mr. Skaggs’s phone revealed text messages from June 30 suggesting that he had asked Mr. Kay to stop by his room with pills late that evening.
Hotel key card records indicated that Mr. Kay’s room, no. 367, was opened at 11:29 p.m., and Mr. Skaggs’s room, no. 469, was opened nine minutes later, at 11:38 p.m.
Investigators later learned that, contrary to what he’d told law enforcement Kay had allegedly admitted to a colleague that he had visited Mr. Skaggs’ room the night of his death.
In the course of their investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration determined that Kay allegedly regularly dealt the blue M/30 pills, dubbed “blue boys,” to Skaggs and to others, dolling out the pills at the stadium where they worked.
“Tyler Skaggs’s overdose, coming, as it did, in the midst of an ascendant baseball career should be a wakeup call: No one is immune from this deadly drug, whether sold as a powder or hidden inside an innocuous-looking tablet,” Cox said. “Suppressing the spread of fentanyl is a priority for the Department of Justice.”
If convicted, Kay faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
Listen to Clayton Neville’s story below:
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