Eric Kay, the Los Angeles Angels employee who was found guilty of providing drugs that led to pitcher Tyler Skaggs’ death, was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Tuesday.
District Judge Terry Means issued the sentence, going above the mandatory minimum of 20 years due to remarks Kay made in prison on a recorded phone conversation that was played in court.
In the conversation, Kay said, “I hope people realize what a piece of s—t [Skaggs] was… Well, he’s dead, so f—k him.”
He also had harsh words about the Skaggs family: “All they see are dollar signs. They may get more money with him dead than if he was playing because he sucked.”
Means, who said he thought the minimum sentences were “excessive,” ultimately had no problem issuing a sentence greater than the minimum because the recordings showed a “refusal to accept responsibility and even be remorseful for something you caused,” according to The Washington Post.
Kay, who has indicated he will appeal his conviction, has since said his words were “so wrong and foul.”
The sentencing comes at the end of a years-long legal battle after the 27-year-old Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room in Texas on July 1, 2019 with oxycodone and fentanyl in his system.
Kay was put on trial in February, in which several MLB players testified that Kay, an opioid user himself, had obtained pain pills for them.
On Tuesday, Skaggs’ family members spoke in court and remarked that Kay was responsible for Tyler’s death.
“Eric Kay knew that the drugs he was giving to my son and other players [were] laced with fentanyl,” Skaggs’ mother, Debbie, said. “A strict sentence…has the power to dissuade people from providing lethal drugs to others.”
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