Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The New York Times reports:
Ed Buck, a Democratic donor and activist whose West Hollywood apartment was the scene of two methamphetamine overdose deaths since 2017, was arrested on Tuesday after investigators said a third man suffered an overdose in his home last week.
Mr. Buck, 65, who has not faced charges for the earlier overdoses but was subject to a wrongful-death lawsuit, was charged on Tuesday with battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house. He faces up to five years and eight months in prison.
The charges relate only to the most recent incident on Sept. 11, when the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office says Mr. Buck injected a 37-year-old man with methamphetamine in Mr. Buck’s home. The man, who was not identified, survived the overdose.
CBS News reports:
Buck, who was arrested at his home Tuesday, should be held on $4 million bail because he is a “violent, dangerous sexual predator” who “mainly preys on men made vulnerable by addiction and homelessness,” prosecutors said in a motion. Buck took advantage of his position of power and offered drugs, money and shelter to mainly addicted and homeless men in exchange for participating in sexual fetishes, including a fetish that involved administering dangerous doses of drugs, the motion said.
Buck came under investigation in January after 55-year-old Timothy Dean was found dead of an accidental methamphetamine overdose in his apartment. It was the second such death in two years, following the July 2017 death of Gemmel Moore, 26. Both men were black. Buck, who is white, was not charged and critics later questioned if wealth, race or political ties influenced the investigations.
CNN reports:
Moore’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Buck, 65, in February alleging that he injected her son with a lethal dose of crystal methamphetamine. The complaint describes Buck as a wealthy white man who “had a predatory and injurious system of soliciting Black men and watching them cling to life.”
Both Moore and another man found dead at Buck’s house, Timothy Dean, were black. The lawsuit accuses him of wrongful death, sexual battery and assault and says he was not prosecuted “because he is white, and because Mr. Moore was Black.”
After the second man’s death in January, I reported that local LGBT activists had besieged law enforcement with demands for action.
Right wing sites had a field day with the story, running images of Buck with prominent Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ted Lieu, and Rep. Adam Schiff.