According to U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad Meacham, former Los Angeles Angels staffer Eric Kay was sentenced today to 22 years in federal prison in connection with the overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs in 2019.
Former Angels communications director Eric Prescott Kay was found guilty in February by a federal jury of conspiring to possess drugs with the intent to distribute them as well as distributing a dangerous substance that caused death. Senior U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means sentenced him today.
Mr. Kay distributed the medications that killed Mr. Skaggs, according to the trial’s testimony.
The Southlake Police Department received a 911 call on July 1, 2019, reporting that Mr. Skaggs, who was only 27 at the time, had been discovered dead in his hotel room at the Southlake Town Square Hilton. This is when the investigation got underway. Later, it was discovered by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office that Mr. Skaggs had a combination of ethanol, fentanyl, and oxycodone in his system when he passed away.
Investigators found a number of pills inside Mr. Skaggs’ hotel room, including one blue pill with the marks M/30. The pill, which closely resembled a 30-milligram oxycodone tablet, was later found to have fentanyl, a potent synthetic narcotic, added to it.
Mr. Kay refused to admit that he was aware of Mr. Skaggs’ drug use during a preliminary interview with police officials. He asserted that Mr. Skaggs was last seen by him on June 30 during hotel check-in. However, a phone search for Mr. Skaggs turned up text messages from June 30 that seemed to indicate he had asked Mr. Kay to bring him medicine late that day.
Investigators later uncovered that Mr. Kay had acknowledged to a coworker that he had in fact visited Mr. Skaggs’ room the night before he passed away, in contrast to what he had initially informed law enforcement the day Mr. Skaggs’ body was found.
The Drug Enforcement Administration discovered throughout their investigation that Mr. Kay allegedly regularly distributed the blue M/30 pills, sometimes known as “blue boys,” to Mr. Skaggs and other others, doling them out at the stadium where they both worked.
In testimony during the trial, a number of former Angels players, including Matt Harvey, C.J. Cron, Mike Morin, and Cameron Bedrosian, claimed that Eric Kay also gave them blue 30-milligram oxycodone pills. They added that he was the sole person who sold these tablets and that they would do business at Angel Stadium.
At the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, the prosecution presented emails and phone conversations from Mr. Kay’s jailhouse as evidence of the seriousness of his conduct and his lack of remorse.
Tyler Skaggs, his dead victim, was subjected to Mr. Kay’s relentless insults:
“I hope people realize what a piece of sht he is,” he told his mother in a recorded jailhouse call. “Well, he’s dead, so fck ‘em.”
As well as making fun of the Skaggs family, he suggested his mother smear them in the media by calling them “stupid” and “white trash.”
“All they see are dollar signs,” he said of the Skaggs family. “They may get more money with him dead than he was playing because he sucked.”
Even the jurors who found him guilty were denigrated by him, who referred to them as “big, sloppy, toothless, and unemployed.”
“The Skaggs family learned the hard way: One fentanyl pill can kill. That’s why our office is committed to holding to account anyone who deals in illicit opioids, whether they operate in back alleyways or world class stadiums,” U.S. Attorney Chad E. Meacham said following today’s hearing. “Mr. Skaggs did not deserve to die this way. No one does. We hope this sentence will bring some comfort to his grieving family.”
“Today’s sentencing of Eric Kay will not ease the suffering that the Skaggs’ family have experienced since 2019,” said Eduardo A. Chavez, Special Agent in Charge of DEA Dallas. “What the guilty verdict and sentencing proves is even if you sell only a small number of pills and one of those pills causes the death of an individual, you will be held responsible and sentenced to the fullest extent allowed by our judicial system.”
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Secret Service, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Fort Worth Field Division and the Southlake Police Department to conduct the investigation. With the assistance of Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Bradshaw, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Errin Martin, Lindsey Beran (fmr), and Joe Lo Galbo are prosecuting the case.