Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – The personal assistant who repeatedly injected Matthew Perry with ketamine before he died was sentenced to prison on Wednesday, becoming the fifth person to face justice over the “Friends” star’s fatal overdose. Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, was ordered to serve three years and five months in federal lock-up after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
Prosecutors said that in the days leading up to Perry’s 2023 death in a hot tub, Iwamasa gave the actor more than 25 shots of the drug, including at least three jabs on the day he died. On Perry’s last day, he told Iwamasa — who lived at his luxury Los Angeles home — “Shoot me up with a big one,” court papers said. Perry’s mother Suzanne Morrison said the family had trusted Iwamasa. “Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” she wrote in a letter to US District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”
Lawyers for Iwamasa said he was really little more than a hired hand, bound to do the bidding of his wealthy boss. Iwamasa had “a particular vulnerability to the relationship dynamic which he fell into with the victim. In short, he could not ‘simply say no.’ That inability had tragic consequences,” the defense wrote in a court filing. Iwamasa is the fifth person to be sentenced in connection with Perry’s death. Others include Salvador Plasencia, one of two doctors who profited off Perry’s addiction.
The physician who taught Iwamasa how to inject ketamine, despite knowing that the 61-year-old had no medical training and knew nothing about treating patients with controlled substances. Plasencia, who was ultimately jailed for two-and-a-half years, worked with another doctor to source drugs for the actor, charging vastly inflated prices and musing at one point: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.” His co-conspirator Mark Chavez was sentenced to house arrest. Earlier this month, Erik Fleming, a certified drug counselor who acted as a middleman to help supply the star with controlled substances, was sentenced to two years in prison. And last month, Jasveen Sangha — a British-American woman dubbed “The Ketamine Queen” who styled herself as a dealer to the stars — was given a 15-year sentence.
Perry, 54, had openly struggled for decades with addiction, but had appeared to colleagues to be beating his demons when he died. The actor had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression. But prosecutors say that by late 2023 he had become addicted to the substance, which is used as an anesthetic but also has psychedelic properties and is a popular party drug. His death set off waves of grief among generations of “Friends” fans who loved him as the sarcastic man-child Chandler Bing.
The sitcom, which followed the lives of six New Yorkers navigating adulthood, dating, and careers, drew a massive following and made megastars of previously unknown actors. Perry’s role brought him fabulous wealth but hid a dark struggle with addiction to painkillers and alcohol. In 2018, he suffered a drug-related burst colon and underwent multiple surgeries. In his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry described going through detox dozens of times. “I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote, “save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps.”
© 2024 AFP
