Ex-wife of Angels employee testifies during Tyler Skaggs trial that players partied with pills on team plane

SANTA ANA, Calif.— The ex-wife of a Los Angeles Angels employee at the center of the overdose death of one of its star pitchers testified in a civil trial Monday that she saw players and clubhouse attendants passing pills and alcohol while partying on the team plane.Camela Kay told jurors in a Southern California courtroom she had traveled on the Angels team plane with her then-husband Eric Kay, who was convicted of providing drugs that led to the 2019 death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, and seen players partying, playing card games, gambling and drinking.“They’re treated like kings,” Camela Kay said of her observations on the plane.

“I had seen them passing out pills or drinking alcohol excessively.”The testimony came in a trial for a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Skaggs’ family contending the Angels should be held responsible for letting a drug-addicted and dealing team communications director stay on the job and access its players.The Angels have said team officials did not know Skaggs was taking drugs and that any drug activity involving him and Kay happened on their own time and in the privacy of the player’s hotel room.Camela Kay said she was concerned that her then-husband had a drug problem after observing his erratic behavior, and family members mounted an intervention with him in 2017.

The next day, she said, two team officials came over to speak with him and one of them pulled a series of plastic baggies containing white pills from the bedroom, which fueled her concerns that Eric Kay was not only struggling with substance abuse but selling drugs to make money.“Him being in the clubhouse with the players, my guess would be he is supplying to them,” she said.Camela Kay also described how her then-husband was driven home by an Angels employee after he was dancing in his office, shirtless, at the stadium in 2019.After he got home, she found a bottle with blue pills inside and called police to press him to go to the hospital, where d...