A California newspaper said it has received multiple death threats over an article they put out that speculated Tyler Skaggs’ death to be caused by an opiod overdose.
It led them to scrub the story completely from their website.
The Santa Monica Observer reported soon after the 27-year-old was found dead in his Texas hotel room on July 1st that he may have been getting opiod prescriptions from multiple doctors who were unaware of each other’s treatments, Deadline reported.
Texas police not only denied the report, but stated there was no information yet that suggested an overdose or suicide.
An Angels spokeswoman also blasted the article as “categorically incorrect” and said the “reckless reporting from Tyler’s hometown paper is disappointing and harmful.”
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In a Saturday opinion titled “Why did we take down our original story about the death of a ballplayer?” the weekly’s publisher, David Ganezer, wrote that it was because the paper had been “attacked on multiple fronts.
“Not simply in the form of a threat letter from lawyers Kirkland and Ellis, representing the Angels and a certain deceased ball player. And not just in the form of anonymous phone calls and emails,” Ganezer said. “No, we also received multiple personal threats and attacks from anonymous sources.
“We’ll never know if they were actually acquainted with the deceased, fans or whatever. But I do know that a young female intern from our organization got a creepy text message on her phone, just after midnight,” Ganezer continued, explaining that he knows “how out of hand the potential pile-on is getting in this country.”
“There are certain things worth risking your life and safety for, and others that just are not.”
