Ryan Reavis: Drug dealer, 39, who supplied fatal drugs to Mac Miller gets 11 years in prison
On Monday, 18 April, one of the individuals convicted for delivering the fentanyl-laced tablets that killed rapper Mac Miller was sentenced to nearly 11 years in jail. Ryan Michael Reavis, 39, admitted to being a middleman in negotiations to supply the rapper with counterfeit oxycodone in 2019, though he claimed that he had no idea the pills were laced with fentanyl.
Miller, whose real name was Malcolm James Miller, died in September 2018 at the age of 26. Reavis received a sentence of 10 years and 11 months in jail, somewhat more than probation officers suggested but less than the 12-and-a-half-year sentence sought by prosecutors. After prosecutors read aloud a heartbreaking victim statement from Miller's mother Karen Meyers, United States District Judge Otis D Wright II handed down the punishment. "My life went dark the moment Malcolm left his world," she said while holding back tears, according to Rolling Stone. "Malcolm was my person, more than a son. We had a bond and kinship that was deep and special and irreplaceable. We spoke nearly every day about everything - his life, plans, music, dreams," the statement read. "He would never knowingly take a pill with fentanyl, ever. He wanted to live and was excited about the future. The hole in my heart will always be there."
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Meyers described her late son's laugh as "infectious and bright," and said that his music spoke to many people all across the world.
The rapper died as a result of a fatal combination of fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner and Coroner. Before being convicted, Reavis allegedly requested merely five years in prison, saying in a statement, "This is not just a regular drug case. Somebody died, and a family is never going to get their son back."
"My family would be wrecked if it was me. They'd never be all right, never truly get over it. I think about that all the time. And I know that whatever happens today, I'm the lucky one because my family is here and I'm here and I'll be with them again. I feel terrible. This is not who I am," he added.
Reavis' defense team wrote in a sentencing letter that he is a "heroin and opioid addict who delivered drugs to support his own addiction. He was not a supplier or an importer, nor was he connected to any larger criminal conspiracy."
In October 2021, Stephen Andrew Walter acknowledged providing Reavis with the fentanyl that killed Miller. Walter agreed to a plea bargain that included a 17-year jail term. Cameron James Pettit, the third drug dealer accused in Miller's overdose case, is still facing charges.
On September 3, 2018, only four days before his death, Miller made his final public performance in front of a small crowd at Hollywood's Hotel Cafe. As a youngster growing up in Pittsburgh, he taught himself to play guitar, bass, piano, and drums, which sparked his career in music.