Multiple people were arrested on Thursday morning over the overdose death of actor Matthew Perry.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that five people – including two doctors – have been charged in connection with Perry’s unexpected death at the age of 54.
No information about the people arrested has been made public, but law enforcement sources told the outlet that they have been charged with conspiracy to distribute ketamine, which was found at high levels in Perry’s system. The indictment, obtained by ABC, alleges that the doctors were the initial sources of Perry’s supply, but officials believe the drug became too expensive, so Perry found new sources, including a woman known as the “Ketamine Queen of Los Angeles.”
Those arrested will also be charged with the death of an unnamed person referred to only as C.M. More information is expected later Thursday during a press conference.
The “Friends” star was found face down in his hot tub on October 28, 2023, at his home in Pacific Palisades. The L.A. County Medical Examiner’s office determined he drowned but attributed his death to ketamine, which Perry had been taking as part of a therapy. The levels of ketamine found in his system, however, were so high they were close to the range that would be used for general anesthesia during surgery.
“At the high levels of ketamine found in his postmortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the report said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Another contributing factor was buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid addiction.
Perry has been open about his struggles with addiction, even writing about his excessive drug use in a tell-all memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” which was published one year before his death.
In the book, he wrote about using ketamine, which is a dissociative anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties that is used in experimental treatments to help with depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, chronic pain, and more.
“I often thought that I was dying during that hour. Oh, I thought, this is what happens when you die. Yet I would continually sign up for this s*** because it was something different, and anything different is good,” Perry wrote.
Perry wrote that the ketamine treatments made him feel like he was “hit in the head with a giant happy shovel” but that the feeling he got from the hangovers “outweighed the shovel.”
In late May, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launched a joint criminal investigation to determine how Perry was able to get so much of the drug into his system.
At the time, Former CIA and FBI special agent Tracy Walder told Page Six that multiple people could be charged and explained that Perry’s death could be connected to a drug ring.
Post a Comment