Roy Halladay was on drugs, made ‘extreme aerial maneuvers’ before fatal plane crash
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA: Baseball Hall of Famer Roy Halladay had a cocktail of drugs in his system and was performing extreme aerial maneuvers when he lost control of his small plane and died after crashing it into the Gulf of Mexico near Florida in 2017, according to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
Halladay, who was just 40 at the time, had earned his pilot's license in 2013 and had about 700 hours of flight time before he took off on the fateful journey on Nov. 7, 2017, in an Icon A5 that he had purchased a month earlier.
He took off from a lake near his home around 15 minutes before the crash, the NTSB report stating that he performed "three maneuvers with high angles of attack (AOA) and load factors of almost 2 Gs" during the last two-and-a-half minutes of his flight.
While he was performing those maneuvers, the airplane was, at times, just five feet above the water, some witnesses said. Others said they saw his airplane making steep turns and high-pitch climbs up to 500 feet, while another commercial fisherman who was nearby said he observed it flying "really close" to houses.
That fisherman told the agency he thought the pilot was "crazy" and prayed for him, "I hope he makes it."
On the last and, ultimately fatal maneuver, he entered a steep climb and his speed fell about 85 miles per hour, causing the propeller-driven plane to go into a nosedive and smash into the water.
"During the final maneuver of the flight, the airplane entered a right turn, the engine power decreased, and the (angle of attack) reached 16°," the report said. "The last recorded data point, at 1203:41, showed that the airplane's airspeed was 75 knots and heading was 354°."
None of the witnesses interviewed heard any problems with the plane's engine and there was no evidence of a bird strike, the report said. It does not give a final reason for the crash.
The documents supporting the report include notes from an interview with the eight-time All-Star's father Harry Leroy Halladay Jr., who was a military and commercial pilot. "Mr. Halladay stated he was concerned that Roy was abusing prescription medications, and that may have played a role in the accident," the entry said.
Indeed, toxicology testing performed at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Forensic Sciences Laboratory found he had amphetamine levels about 10 times therapeutic levels in his blood, as well as morphine, which can change the brain's physiology with regular use.
He also had Zolpidem, a sleep aid that can cause complex behaviors like "sleep-driving," Fluoxetine, a prescription antidepressant that has a "potential to impair judgment," Baclofen, a muscle relaxant that can cause sedation, hydromorphone, an opioid pain medication, and ibuprofen in his blood.
Halladay had a history of substance abuse that required inpatient rehabilitation twice between 2013 and 2015, as well as diagnoses of chronic back pain, insomnia, and depression that were treated with various prescribed medications.
Following an autopsy, the Office of the Medical Examiner, District Six, Pasco and Pinellas Counties, Florida, said his cause of death was blunt trauma, and that drowning was a contributory condition.