By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES -One of three men charged with supplying the pills laced with fentanyl that rapper Mac Miller took before his fatal 2018 overdose has agreed to plead guilty to drug distribution, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
Miller, 26, died at his home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City after crushing and snorting the pills. An autopsy found he had suffered an accidental overdose of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol.
Ryan Michael Reavis, who was indicted alongside two other men in the case, will plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to a single count of fentanyl possession, a DOJ spokesperson said in a written statement.
Reavis, 38, has admitted as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that he supplied counterfeit oxycodone pills to co-defendant Cameron James Petit, 30. Petit is accused of selling them to Miller.
Prosecutors say Reavis has admitted he distributed the drugs at the direction of co-defendant Stephen Andrew Walter, 48, knowing that they contained fentanyl. Reavis lived in Los Angeles at the time but moved to Arizona before his 2019 arrest.
Walter has also agreed to plead guilty in the case, according to prosecutors. The case against Petit is still pending. Both men were expected to enter their pleas in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles sometime in the next few weeks.
The Pittsburgh-born Miller, born Malcolm James McCormick, won a following as a teenager and topped the Billboard album charts with his 2011 debut album, “Blue Slide Park.”
He was posthumously nominated for a Grammy for his final album, “Swimming.”
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Aurora Ellis)