Skaggs’ mom: Knew about son’s addiction; wasn’t asked by Angels

Santa Ana, California – Debbie Heitman, mother of the deceased Los Angeles Angels One of the plaintiffs in the family’s wrongful death civil lawsuit against pitcher Tyler Skaggs and the franchise testified Monday that he did not know whether his son ever informed the team about his drug addiction, but that the organization never asked him any questions about it.

Had the team asked, Heitman said, he would have told the Angels that he had become addicted to Percocet after the 2013 season. He said that his son came to him and asked for help. The Angels traded for Skaggs before the 2014 season.

The Angels have long said they had no knowledge of Skaggs’ drug problems, one of the key arguments presented by the defense in the trial, which entered its sixth week on Monday. The Angels argue that they are not responsible for Skaggs’ death, and that it was his reckless decisions in mixing alcohol and opioids that led to his death from an accidental fentanyl overdose in a Texas hotel room in 2019.

On Monday, the two lead plaintiffs in the case – Heitman and Skaggs’ widow, Carly Skaggs – gave emotional testimony.

Heitman described how Skaggs came out to him and Skaggs’ stepfather after the 2013 season, when Skaggs attended Arizona Diamondbacks organization, and told them he was addicted to Percocet. He worked with Skaggs to see doctors with experience in addiction and a psychiatrist.

She said her son was taking drug tests the following summer — which was part of his medical plan and his mother insisted on — to make sure he stayed clean. By then, he had been traded to the angels. Heitman believed his son was fine after his 2013 admission because he looked more like him than the “very sad and lost” man he saw after the 2013 season.

“As a parent, you want to make sure your child is on the right path,” Heitman testified. “And stay healthy and not fall back into the same patterns of use.”

Heitman said she talked to Dr. Neil L’Attrache, who performed Skaggs’ Tommy John surgery in 2014, about her son’s Percocet problem and wanted him to prescribe him different painkillers. She also told Skaggs’ agents and occasionally talked to his then-girlfriend Carly about it.

Carly Skaggs testified Monday that she made no further inquiries to the family or her future husband. Carly Skaggs, the lead plaintiff in the case, denied knowing that her husband had a drug problem or that he had taken illegal pills before his 2019 death. She said she knew he only used marijuana and ecstasy drugs during the honeymoon.

As part of an uncomfortable cross-examination, the defense attorney asked Carly Skaggs if she thought her husband needed help with drug rehab. He didn’t say. Carly Skaggs also testified her belief that it was out of character 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 of giving Skaggs the pill that killed him and is serving 22 years in prison. Several players testified during the criminal trial that Kay provided them with pills.

Carly Skaggs gave tearful testimony about her relationship with Skaggs, how it had been six years since she learned he died. Angels general manager Billy Eppler called to deliver the news.

“I don’t even know if I heard him say the words ‘he’s gone,’ but that’s what I knew,” Carly Skaggs said. “And then I called Debbie right away.”

She described the call as “the worst phone call I’ve ever made.” The family went to Texas and Carly Skaggs described seeing her husband at the coroner’s office.

“I didn’t want to look at him but I had to because I needed to know that it was real, that he was really gone,” Carly Skaggs said. “As painful as it was, I needed this. It was in this cold, white room and the love of my life, my best friend, he was lying there lifeless, and I had just talked to him the day before.”

She said she wanted to give him one last kiss “even though I was scared of it.”

Six years later, she said, she still asks herself “Is this real?” He described difficulties entering into new relationships and making friends with children because it was “a reminder of what I don’t have.”

In the final days before her father’s death last year, Carly Skaggs held his hand while he listened to her testify about her husband’s death on headphones, she said.

The lawsuit, she said, “has ruined my life.”