Matthew Perry death:
Matthew Perry
Months after the demise of the beloved 'Friends' star Matthew Perry, the investigator has charged five people including the actor's assistant and two doctors. The actor was found dead in his bathtub having passed away from a ketamine overdose.
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US Attorney Martin Estrada announced the charges at a press conference on Thursday, saying the doctors supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine and even wondered in a text message how much the former 'Friends' star would be willing to pay.
“This network included a live-in assistant, various go-betweens, two medical doctors and a major source of drug supply known as ‘The Ketamine Queen,'” said Estrada, announcing the charges. “These defendants took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction issues to enrich themselves. They knew what they were doing was wrong. They knew what they were doing was risking great danger to Mr. Perry, but they did it anyways. In the end, these defendants were more interested in profiting off Mr. Perry than caring for his well being.”
Perry died in October due to a ketamine overdose and received several injections of the drug on the day he died from his live-in personal assistant. The assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, is the one who found Perry dead later that day.
The lead defendants in the case are doctor Salvador Plasencia and drug trafficker Jasveen Sangha. Together, they worked with doctor Mark Chavez, Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa and a “broker” named Erik Fleming to obtain ketamine and sell it to Perry. Two of the people, including one of the doctors charged, have been arrested, Estrada said. Two of the defendants, including Iwamasa, have pleaded guilty to charges already, and a third person has agreed to plead guilty.
The prosecutor said the defendants exchanged messages soon after Perry's death referencing ketamine as the cause of death. Estrada said they tried to cover up their involvement in supplying Perry ketamine, a powerful anesthetic that is sometimes used to treat chronic pain and depression.
Los Angeles police said in May that they were working with the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Postal Inspection Service with a probe into why the 54-year-old had so much of the surgical anesthetic in his system.
Iwamasa found the actor face down in his hot tub on Oct 28, and paramedics who were called immediately declared him dead. His autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.
People close to Perry told coroner's investigators that he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy. But the medical examiner said Perry's last treatment 1 1/2 weeks earlier wouldn't explain the levels of ketamine in his blood. The drug is typically metabolised in a matter of hours.
Perry had years of struggles with addiction dating back to his time on ¿Friends,¿ when he became one of the biggest television stars of his generation as Chandler Bing alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC's megahit sitcom.
Drug-related celebrity deaths have in other cases led authorities to prosecute the people who supplied them.
(with inputs from agencies)
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