Mac Miller: Drug dealer who gave deadly pills to singer pleads guilty
The drug supplier now faces a maximum of 20-year-sentence in prison on top of a fine of up to £726,425
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Your support makes all the difference.A drug supplier who allegedly sold late rapper Mac Miller deadly fentanyl pills has plead guilty, according to a plea agreement filed in California.
In 2018, the 26-year-old rapper was found dead by his assistant at his San Fernando Valley home in Los Angeles on 7 September.
A post-mortem examination found that Miller died from an accidental overdose, via a combination of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol.
According to the agreement, which was reviewed by CBS News, Stephen Andrew Walter told an unnamed runner to distribute counterfeit oxycodone pills that contained fentanyl.
Those pills ended up with Miller’s dealer Cameron James Pettit, who provided them to the rapper, the document said.
Three days after selling the pills to the “Weekend” singer, Miller was found dead.
Walter now faces a maximum of 20-year-sentence in prison on top of a fine of up to $1 million (£726,425). Pettit and the runner involved are also charged for the crime.
Walter apparently knew that the pills “contained fentanyl or some other federally controlled substance”, and was aware that those will be given to Pettit.
The plea document also states that Miller “would not have died from an overdose but for the fentanyl contained in the pills.”
According to a previous affidavit, after reports of Miller’s death circulated in 2018, Pettit allegedly sent an Instagram message to a friend saying, “Most likely I will die in jail”.
Investigators say they also obtained text messages between Miller and Pettit before the sale, in which Miller proclaims his love for oxycodone, or “percs” for the brand name Percocet, and also asks for “bars” of Xanax and a “ball” of cocaine.
“When can u get em?” Miller asks, according to a transcript of the exchange contained in court filings.
“Probably in an hour or 2. They are 30 ea,” Pettit replies.
“Any chance I can get 10 of those, 10 bars and a ball?” Miller asks.
“Yeah for sure,” Pettit replies.
Miller, a Pittsburgh native whose work brought him wide respect in the hip-hop community, was in a two-year relationship with Ariana Grande that ended earlier in 2018.
He was one of a number of artists whose death has been linked to a national wave of opioid abuse and overdoses.
American singer Prince died in 2016 when he took counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that looked like a generic version of the painkiller Vicodin.
Matthew Roberts, guitarist for the band 3 Doors Down, also died of an overdose in 2016 and had fentanyl and hydrocodone in his system.
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