Angels staffer told colleague he watched pitcher do opiate lines off menu before he died
In mid-July 2019, a couple of weeks after Tyler Skaggs died inside a hotel room in Southlake, Eric Kay’s behavior had become erratic, a witness testified on Monday at Kay’s trial.
On the day of a game in Anaheim, California, Kay, then the communications director for the Los Angeles Angels, kept his office door closed for much of the morning. His hair was disheveled, and he was sweating through his polo shirt.
Adam Chodzko, Kay’s subordinate in the Angels press department, thought that Kay should go home and that his boss was not in shape to drive. He offered to take Kay there.
As they headed away from the ballpark, Kay shared an account of the hours before Skaggs, an Angels starting pitcher, died. Kay had been traveling with the team on June 30 as the Angels went to Texas to play the Rangers.
“He said he had something he needed to tell me,” Chodzko testified on Monday in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.
Kay had on the day after Skaggs’ death repeated to Chodzko a rumor that Skaggs died because he choked on gummy bears, Chodzko testified.
On the car ride, Kay shared a different story. Skaggs had sent a text message to invite Kay to come to his room at a Hilton hotel in Southlake. Kay first declined, then went, he told Chodzko.
Skaggs had three lines of opiates on a hotel menu, Kay told Chodzko.
“He said he watched Tyler do the three lines,” Chodzko testified.
The account of the car conversation came on the fifth day of Kay’s trial on two crimes in connection with Skaggs’ death. Kay was indicted on conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death and serious bodily injury.
In his direct examination testimony, Chodzko referred to opiates, but in testimony to a grand jury he said that Kay told him he watched as Skaggs did some sort or some kind of drug, Chodzko testified on cross examination.
A forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy of Skaggs testified last week that his death was caused by a mixture of three substances that led Skaggs to aspirate, but stopped short of concluding definitively that Skaggs would have survived had he not ingested fentanyl.
Had Skaggs consumed only alcohol and oxycodone, the other elements of his mixed intoxication, there was “reduced probability” that he would have died, but it “can’t be eliminated,” Dr. Marc Krouse testified.
Prosecutors allege that Kay provided Skaggs, 27, with a fentanyl-laced oxycodone pill that they say killed him.
In her opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Beran told jurors that they would hear evidence that Skaggs would not have died but for ingesting fentanyl.
Kay, who has pleaded not guilty, rejected a plea offer in the case, Beran told U.S. District Judge Terry Means at a pretrial conference. She did not describe the terms of the offer.
Kay, 47, was indicted in July 2020.
This story was originally published February 14, 2022 at 2:30 PM.
