“After Eric Kay got to the hotel in Texas, was he on or off duty?” Theodora asked.
“Off duty,” Mead replied.
He confirmed that Skaggs, too, was off duty at the time of his death and said he could not have foreseen Kay giving the pitcher illicit drugs.
Background: Drugs, Oversight, and Accountability
Kay, who reported to Mead during his tenure with the Angels, was convicted in 2022 of distributing the fentanyl-laced pill that killed Skaggs and later sentenced to 22 years in prison. The Skaggs family argues that Kay’s drug problems were known within the organization, yet the team failed to intervene even after multiple incidents of suspected impairment at work.
The Angels, meanwhile, maintain they had no reason to suspect either Kay’s alleged drug activity or Skaggs’ use of illegal substances. The team contends that Skaggs’ own decision to drink and use drugs was a concurrent cause of his death and that the organization bore no duty to police off-duty conduct.
“Stunned” Reaction to Skaggs’ Death
Mead said he first learned of Skaggs’ death after returning from a trip to London and did not initially suspect drugs were involved. He testified that he only became aware of Kay’s connection weeks later, during a July 18, 2019, phone call from the team’s traveling secretary Tom Taylor and his former assistant Adam Chodzko, who told him Kay had been in Skaggs’ hotel room the night of his death.
