A trial date has been set for the alleged drug dealers accused of selling Mac Miller the counterfeit pills that killed him.
Miller – whose real name was Malcolm McCormick – died on September 7, 2018 at the age of 26. A coroner’s report later revealed his cause of death to be “mixed drug toxicity”, with fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol found in his system at the time of his death.
In 2019, three men – Cameron James Pettit, Andrew Walter and Ryan Michael Reavis – were charged with selling cocaine, oxycodone and Xanax to the rapper. Two days before his death, Miller bought a mix of substances, including the three aforementioned ones.
Prosecutors claimed that the pills given to the star were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. Walter allegedly supplied the pills to Pettit, while Reavis was allegedly employed as a runner.
US Attorney Nick Hanna said the defendants had “allegedly continued to sell narcotics after Mr McCormick’s death with full knowledge of the risk of their products”.
The three men have been held without bail for over two years in Los Angeles. Their trial is now set to begin on November 16, 2021.
“It has become increasingly common for us to see drug dealers peddling counterfeit pharmaceuticals made with fentanyl,” Hanna said in a statement announcing the indictment. “As a consequence, fentanyl is now the number one cause of overdose deaths in the United States.”
Reavis is reportedly also facing charges of fraudulent schemes and artifices, possession of marijuana, possession of prescription drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia, weapons misconduct by a prohibited possessor and manufacture of a prohibited weapon.
His lawyer Correen Ferrentino told AllHipHop Reavis wanted his trial to be separate from his co-defendants’ because he was an “alleged runner and minor participant who is alleged to be involved in one transaction”. However, his request has been denied.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Last month, the family and friends of Mac Miller urged fans not to purchase a new unauthorised book about the late rapper. Most Dope: The Extraordinary Life Of Mac Miller was written by Paul Cantor and is set to be released next year.
“This book is not authorised or endorsed by Malcolm’s family and has been written by a writer with whom Malcolm did not have a relationship,” a statement read. “The writer of this book was made aware at the outset of the process of writing this book that the family and friends of Malcolm were uncomfortable with him authoring this biography, yet he chose to proceed against our polite insistence that he not do disservice to Malcolm’s legacy through writing a book without legitimate primary sources.”