Testimony in the wrongful death trial against the Los Angeles Angels began Wednesday, Oct. 15, with a former team vice president saying he didn’t recall seeing illicit drugs in the home of a communications staffer who two years later gave pitcher Tyler Skaggs a counterfeit pill containing fentanyl that led to the ballplayer’s death.
Taking the stand in a Santa Ana courtroom, Tim Mead, a former VP in charge of communications for the Angels, acknowledged that he at times saw concerning and erratic behavior by Eric Kay, a longtime team public relations director who later was convicted in connection with Skaggs’ death. But Mead said he believed the “off” behavior was due to Kay’s struggles with mental illness and legally prescribed drugs, and Mead denied knowing prior to Skaggs’ death that Kay had been providing Skaggs or other players with any illicit drugs.
“I never heard anything about any unlawful drugs,” Mead testified. “The explanation was always prescription medication.”
Mead acknowledged that Kay’s wife has described Mead and another Angels staffer coming to the Kay home after a family intervention on the last day of the Angels season in 2017 and seeing in Kay’s room 60 pills divided up into baggies of 10 pills each, some hidden in socks or shoes. Attorneys for Skaggs’ family have argued that the alleged discovery of the pills should have tipped the club off that Kay was providing drugs to players two years before Skaggs death.
But Mead testified Wednesday that he did not recall the details of his trip to the Kay home, including whether he saw any pills.
“I recall very little of that morning,” Mead said
“Did he (Kay) tell you that he was dealing drugs or that he gave drugs to Tyler Skaggs?” asked Rusty Hardin, an attorney representing Skaggs’ family.
“No sir,” Mead answered.
When asked by Hardin whether Kay’s wife would lie about seeing Mead and the other Angels employee finding the pills in Kay’s room, Mead replied that Kay’s wife is “honest and straightforward,”
“I’m not saying it didn’t happen,” Mead said. “I’m saying I have no recollection of that time.”
There seems to be no dispute that Kay provided illicit drugs to Skaggs and five other former Angels players. But the key question for jurors will ultimately be whether the Angels knew that their employee was distributing drugs to players and therefore have some responsibility for Skaggs’ death.
Mead said Kay — whom he described as “outgoing, entertaining, intelligent, witty and quick” — was a dedicated employee whose job included helping facilitate interviews between players and media. But, during a full day of testimony, Mead also recounted a series of incidents involving Kay over the years he was employment by the team.
In 2013, Kay was found in apparent distress in a press box during a road trip to Yankee Stadium. Mead, with the help of Angels traveling secretary Tom Taylor, said he ended up having a team bus take Kay back to their hotel. Mead testified that he didn’t recall Kay telling Mead and Kay’s wife that he was taking five Vicodins a day
“He was standing against a wall or a door with tears in his eyes,” Mead said of Kay’s demeanor at the stadium. “Just fear, fear is what I saw. Fear and frightened. Breathing fast. He couldn’t pull it back. He just said to me ‘I can’t stop this, I’m going to lose my job.’ It wasn’t incoherent, it was just fractured.”
On one occasion, Kay agreed to take a 90 mph pitch to the leg after a player offered him $1,000, Mead acknowledged. On another occasion, Mead said he heard Kay had agreed to eat a pimple off someone’s back, which Mead said left him feeling “a little disgusted.” At one point, Mead said he had to rebuke Kay for having an affair with an intern in another department.
But it was issues that Mead attributed to what he believed to be Kay’s prescription drug use — tied to what Kay apparently described as his ADHD, depression and bipolar issues — that Mead said caused him the most concern. Mead acknowledged he was in regular contact with Kay’s wife, who at one point texted him that Kay “has got some demons he needs to deal with.”
“He (Kay) would just be very open about his mental health situation and conditions,” Mead said. “He was a good worker, he was a good performer. I saw him bounce back if I was to see an off-day… I took him at his word for knowing his condition and how it was managed.
On Easter Day in 2019, a sweating and erratic Kay — who was allegedly vomiting and dancing with his shirt off — was taken home from the stadium and later hospitalized.
“He was a mess,” Mead said of Kay’s condition at the hospital. “His eyes were half rolled up in his head, he was sweating. It was the worst I had ever seen him.”
“I realized it was a much bigger issue, a much bigger problem going on,” he added.
Hardin, the Skaggs’ family attorney, repeatedly asked Mead why he didn’t report the issues with Kay — and the apparent signs of potential drug use — to the Angels HR department. Mead said he knew Kay was taking part in an Employee Assistance Program meant to get him treatment. And while Mead said he didn’t report the issues with Kay to his higher-ups, he recalled the team president at one point telling him during a quick hallway conversation that he knew Mead was taking care of the situation with Kay.
“I did, I took care of it,” Mead said. “Or so I thought.”
In June 2019, Mead left the Angels to take a position at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Less than a month later, Skaggs died alone in a hotel room in Southlake, Texas, at the beginning of an Angels road trip of what was later determined to be a lethal combination of fentanyl, oxycodone and alcohol.
Attorneys for the Skaggs family allege that messages sent in 2019 show Kay was using his Angels work email account to purchase oxycodone from random people online. Attorneys for the ballclub counter that it was Skaggs who introduced other players to opioids, telling them that Kay could procure the illicit pills.
Angels’ attorneys allege that the death of Skaggs was a result of the pitcher deciding to mix an estimated 11 to 13 drinks with oxycodone and the counterfeit pill from Kay the turned out to contain fentanyl. They deny that team leaders knew that Skaggs had a drug problem or that Kay was providing him with illicit pills until after the pitchers death.
Kay is serving a more than 20 year sentence in federal prison for his role in Skaggs’ death. He is not expected to testify during the trial.
Testimony in what is expected to be a more than month-long civil trial will resume on Friday morning.