Third 'drug dealer' charged with death of rapper Mac Miller

27 September 2019, 01:32

A third man has been charged with with drug offences in connection with the overdose death of rapper Mac Miller.

Steven Walter is suspected of selling counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that Miller possessed before he died of an accidental overdose last year of cocaine, alcohol and the powerful opioid.

Walter is accused of being the source of the pills that another man, Cameron Pettit, sold to Miller.

Ryan Reavis, 36, who was arrested in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, this week is accused of serving as Walter's "runner," who delivered the pills to Pettit.

Mac, whose real name was Malcolm James Myers McCormick, included frank discussion of his depression and drug use in his lyrics, earning him fans among some of the biggest names in hip-hop.

He was also in a two-year relationship with Ariana Grande that ended earlier in 2018.

Miller was one of several musicians whose deaths have been linked in recent years to a national wave of opioid abuse and overdoses.

Prince died in 2016 when he took counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that looked like a generic version of the painkiller Vicodin.

Matthew Roberts, guitarist for the band 3 Doors Down, also died of an overdose in 2016, and had fentanyl and hydrocodone in his system.