Doctor to Be Sentenced for Providing Ketamine to ‘Friends’ Star Matthew Perry
Dec. 3 (UPI) — A doctor who pleaded guilty earlier this year to providing ketamine to the late Friends star Matthew Perry is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in a Los Angeles court.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia is one of five people convicted in Perry’s 2023 death from a ketamine overdose. The 54-year-old actor was found unconscious in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home and could not be revived.
An autopsy showed Perry died of an overdose of ketamine, which he initially began taking to treat his depression and anxiety. His drug use, however, increased to the point where he was injecting six to eight times a day in the weeks before his death.
Plasencia, who pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing ketamine in June, is the first of five people to be sentenced in the case, ABC News reported. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison on each count at his hearing at 11 a.m. PST in Los Angeles federal court.
Plasencia operated an urgent care clinic in Malibu and admitted to working with another doctor, Dr. Mark Chavez, to provide ketamine to Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. In his plea agreement, Plasencia admitted to selling 20 5 ml vials of the drug, a partial package of ketamine lozenges and syringes.
The doctor visited Perry at his home and at least one other location to administer ketamine injections. In his plea agreement, he said he left vials and lozenges with Iwamasa to give to Perry, even though he knew he was not trained to do so.
Federal prosecutors said Plasencia was eager to take advantage of Perry and become his sole drug supplier.
“Indeed, on the day defendant met Perry, he made his profit motive known, telling a co-conspirator, ‘I wonder how much this idiot is going to pay,’ and ‘let’s find out,’” prosecutors said.
Perry’s parents submitted victim impact statements to the court before Plasencia’s sentencing. Suzanne Morrison and Keith Morrison shared the letter with Rolling Stone magazine. They described Plasencia as “one of the most culpable people of all” involved in Perry’s death.
“How do you measure grief? Can you possibly provide a rational accounting? Has the bottom fallen out? Yes, that,” the letter read.
“It was a life so intertwined with ours and sometimes held aloft with duct tape and wire, with anything that could keep this big, terrible thing from killing our eldest son, and our hearts with it. And then these greedy jackals come out of the darkness, and all efforts are in vain; everything falls apart.”
