In the civil trial for the death of Tyler Skaggs, pitcher for the [Los Angeles Angels](/mlb/team/_/name/laa/los-angeles-angels), Debbie Hetman, the deceased player’s mother and one of the plaintiffs, testified that she did not know if her son had informed the team about his drug addiction. According to her testimony, the organization never asked her questions about her son’s situation. Hetman stated that, had she been consulted, she would have revealed that Skaggs became addicted to Percocet after the 2013 season. Los Ángeles has maintained that they were unaware of Skaggs’ drug problems, the central argument of the defense in the trial, which entered its sixth week. The defense argues that they are not responsible for Skaggs’ death, claiming that the player’s reckless decisions to mix alcohol and opioids led to his death from an accidental fentanyl overdose in a Texas hotel room in 2019. In the trial, both Hetman and Carli Skaggs, the player’s widow, offered emotional testimonies. Hetman recounted how Skaggs confessed to her and her stepfather his Percocet addiction after the 2013 season, when he played for the [Arizona Diamondbacks](/mlb/team/_/name/ari/arizona-diamondbacks). Together, they sought medical and psychiatric help for Skaggs. He described that his son was undergoing drug tests, part of his medical plan and required by his mother, even in the following summer, to make sure he stayed clean. By then, he had already been traded to the Angels. Hetman believed his son was doing well after the 2013 confession because he looked more like himself than the “very somber and lost” person he saw after the 2013 season. As a parent, you want to make sure your child is on the right track. And that they stay healthy and don’t fall back into the same pattern of consumption. Hetman mentioned that he spoke with Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who performed Skaggs’ Tommy John surgery in 2014, about his son’s Percocet problem and that he wanted him to be prescribed different painkillers. He also informed Skaggs’ agents and had a casual conversation with his then-girlfriend, Carli, about the issue. Carli Skaggs stated that she did not inquire further with the family or her future husband. She denied knowing that her husband had a drug problem or that he took illegal pills before his death in 2019. The only drugs she knew he took were marijuana and ecstasy once on their honeymoon, she said. In an uncomfortable cross-examination, the defense attorney asked Carli Skaggs if she felt her husband needed help with drug rehabilitation. She replied no. Carli Skaggs also testified that she thought it was unusual for Skaggs to ask former communications employee Eric Kay for drugs after Kay left rehab in 2019. Kay was convicted in federal court in 2022 for giving Skaggs the pill that killed him and is serving 22 years in prison. Multiple players testified during the criminal trial that Kay provided them with pills. Carli Skaggs offered a tearful testimony about her relationship with Skaggs, how she learned of his death, and the six years that have passed since then. The general manager of the Angels, Billy Eppler, called to give the news.
She described the call as “the worst phone call I’ve ever made.” The family traveled to Texas and Carli Skaggs recounted seeing her husband at the coroner’s office. “I didn’t want to see him, but I had to because I needed to know it was real, that he was really gone,” said Carli Skaggs. “As painful as it was, I needed it. I was in this cold, white room and the love of my life, my best friend, was there lifeless on a stretcher, and I had just spoken to him the day before.” He said he wanted to give her one last kiss “even if he was scared”. Six years later, she asks herself “is this real?”. She described the difficulties in forming new relationships and seeing friends with children because it is “a reminder of what I don’t have”. In the last few days before her father died last year, said Carli Skaggs, she held his hand while listening to the deposition testimony with headphones about her husband’s death. The trial, he said, has “consumed my life”.I don’t even know if I heard the words ‘he’s gone’, but that’s what I knew. And I immediately called Debbie.
Carli Skaggs
