Angels Staffer Found Guilty for Distributing Drugs That Caused Tyler Skaggs’s Death

Eric Kay, the former Angels communications director, was found guilty on charges that he supplied Skaggs with fentanyl that caused his death in 2019.

On Thursday, a jury found former Angels communications director Eric Kay guilty on two counts of drug distribution resulting in death and drug conspiracy. The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for less than three hours.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 28, per ESPN's T.J. Quinn. Kay faces 20 years to life imprisonment for the drug distribution charge and up to 20 years for the drug conspiracy charge.

A coroner’s report said Skaggs, 27, had choked to death on his vomit in 2019, and a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was in his system.

On Feb. 9, Kay’s defense attorney, Reagan Wynn, said former Angels teammate Matt Harvey provided Skaggs with one of the pills the late Angels pitcher took the night of his death. Per Wynn, Kay saw Skaggs take three lines of crushed pills—two blue and one pink. Kay asked Skaggs where the pink substance came from, and Skaggs responded, “Those are Percocets I got from [former teammate Matt] Harvey.“

Percocet was not detected in Skaggs’s system, though investigators later determined the pink pills found in his room were “legitimately manufactured five-milligram oxycodone pills that did not contain fentanyl.”

Harvey said he tried oxycodone in 2019, provided to him by Skaggs, though Harvey said he didn’t like the way it made him feel.