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ex-wife of los angeles Angels A center field employee will face more cross-examination Tuesday in the overdose death of one of the team’s star pitchers after she testified that she saw players and clubhouse attendants giving her pills and alcohol while partying on the team plane.
Camella Kay told jurors Southern California In the courtroom Monday she traveled on the Angels team plane with her then-husband Eric Kay, who was convicted of providing drugs that led to the 2019 death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs. He said he saw players partying, playing card games, gambling and drinking alcohol.
“They’re treated like kings,” Camella Kay said of his comments on the plane. “I saw him taking pills or drinking excessively.”
The testimony came at the hearing of a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family, which contended that the Angels should be held responsible for allowing the team’s then-communications director, Eric Kay, to remain on the job and reach out to players while he was addicted to drugs and working. The Angels have stated that team officials did not know that Skaggs was taking drugs and that any drug activity involving him and Eric Kay occurred on their own time and in the privacy of the player’s hotel room.
Camella Kay testified that she told an Angels employee that her then-husband intended to sell drugs to Skaggs on at least one occasion. This, he said, was based on information Eric Kay had told his sister while she was in the hospital due to a drug overdose. Camella Kay said the sister then told her, and she told an Angels employee.
Engels’ defense attorneys began cross-examining Camella Kay on Monday, raising questions about her direct knowledge of Eric Kay’s conversations with Skaggs.
Camella Kay said she was concerned that her then-husband had a drug problem after witnessing erratic behavior, and family members intervened with him in 2017. The next day, two officers from the team came to speak with him and one of them pulled a series of plastic bags filled with white pills from the bedroom, increasing their concerns that Eric K was not only struggling with substance abuse, but was also selling drugs to make money.
“He’s in the clubhouse with the players, my guess is he’s supplying them,” he said.
Camella K also revealed how her then-husband was fired from his home by an Angels employee in 2019 after dancing shirtless in the stadium in his office. After arriving home, he found a bottle with blue pills inside and called the police, forcing her to go to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with an overdose of six different drugs, he said.
He was hospitalized for three days and then went to rehabilitation, which was revealed in text messages between Camella and team officials shown to jurors.
She said her sister-in-law told her after visiting Eric K. in the hospital that he had told her the pills were for Skaggs. She said she found text messages on his phone about him getting “candy” at the stadium and she alerted Angels officials to both.
She said she was concerned about Eric K. going on the road with the Angels after completing a six-week stint in rehab, saying he was still behaving erratic and she suspected he was abusing a medication designed to treat opioid addiction.
After Skaggs’ death, Camella Kay filed for divorce, according to Orange County court records.
The trial comes more than six years after Skaggs, who was 27 at the time, was found dead in a suburban dallas The hotel room where he was staying was the beginning of a four-game series against the Angels. texas Rangers. The coroner’s report said Skaggs died of asphyxiation due to vomit and a toxic mixture of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone was found in his system.
Eric Kay was convicted in 2022 of providing counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl to Skaggs and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His federal criminal trial in Texas included testimony from five people mlb Players who said they received oxycodone from him at various times from 2017 to 2019 were accused of obtaining the pills and giving them to Angels players in those years.
Skaggs was a regular in the Angels’ starting lineup since late 2016 and battled recurring injuries during that time. He previously played for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Skaggs’ family is seeking $118 million in lost earnings, compensation for pain and suffering and punitive damages against the team.
After Skaggs’ death, MLB reached an agreement with the players’ union to begin testing for opioids and refer those who test positive to a treatment board.