At least one person has been arrested over the death of Friends star Matthew Perry, according to US media.
Perry, 54, was found unresponsive at his Los Angeles home in October last year. A post-mortem examination found the cause of his death was “the acute effects of ketamine”, a controlled drug which the recovering addict was taking as part of supervised therapy.
LA police opened an investigation in May to determine why Perry had so much of the drug in his system.
ABC News and TMZ reported that multiple people had been arrested and were facing federal charges. Other outlets, including NBC News, said at least one arrest had been made.
Police said they would hold a press conference with more details later on Thursday.
Ketamine – a powerful anaesthetic – is used as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain. People close to Perry told a coroner’s investigation after his death that he was was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy.
But his last session had taken place more than a week before his death. The medical examiner said the ketamine in Perry’s system could not have been from the infusion therapy because of the drug’s short half-life.
The levels of ketamine in his body were as high as the amount given during general anaesthesia, according to the medical examiner.
Just how the actor – who had reportedly not had a supervised infusion session for several days – obtained the drug became the subject of the legal investigation.
Drowning was also listed as a contributing factor in his death, which was ruled an accident. Other contributing factors were coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid use disorder.
At the height of his fame, Perry was battling with addiction to painkillers and alcohol, and attended rehabilitation clinics on multiple occasions. He detailed his struggle with substance use in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
In 2016, he told BBC Radio 2 that he could not remember three years of filming during Friends, because of drink and drugs.
After attempts at treatment, he wrote in his memoir that he had been mostly sober since 2001 – “save for about 60 or 70 mishaps”.
