Prosecutors have charged three men with the distribution of drugs that allegedly resulted in the death of rapper Mac Miller.
The three men arrested during the investigation into rapper Mac Miller’s overdose last year have now been charged with providing the drugs that killed him, U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday. The grand jury indictment, unsealed in Los Angeles on Wednesday, accused the men of conspiring and distributing cocaine and oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that cause Miller’s death in September 2018.
Cameron Pettit, Stephen Walter and Ryan Reavis face up to life in jail if found guilty and remain in custody.
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Prosecutors in Los Angeles say Mac Miller thought he’d been sold a painkiller called oxycodone but it had actually been laced with fentanyl, a powerful drug that is 50 times more potent than heroin.The coroner found fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol in his body and concluded he had accidentally taken an overdose.
The 26-year-old singer born Malcolm McCormick died on September 7, 2018, after ingesting a lethal combination of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol, according to the Los Angeles medical examiner.
Authorities said that three days before Miller died, Pettit had agreed to supply him with 10 “blues” — a street term for oxycodone pills — as well as cocaine and the sedative Xanax.
The indictment alleges that Pettit ordered the fentanyl-laced pills from Walter, and then Reavis delivered the narcotics to Pettit.
“It has become increasingly common for us to see drug dealers peddling counterfeit pharmaceuticals made with fentanyl,” United States Attorney Nick Hanna said in a statement.
“As a consequence, fentanyl is now the number one cause of overdose deaths in the United States,”
The rapper had always been open about his issues with substance abuse and had been arrested for drink driving in May 2018.
Addiction was a big theme on his final album, Swimming, which was nominated for a Grammy after his death.