N.Y. state police provide update after Canadian child found dead
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CTV News
12 minutes ago
- CTV News
Doctor who supplied Matthew Perry ketamine and called him a ‘moron' is set to enter guilty plea
Matthew Perry appears at the GQ Men of the Year Party in West Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File) LOS ANGELES — A doctor charged with giving Matthew Perry ketamine in the weeks leading up to the 'Friends' star's overdose death is expected to plead guilty Wednesday. Dr. Salvador Plasencia would be the fourth of five people charged in connection with Perry's death to plead guilty. Plasencia was to have gone on trial in August until the doctor agreed last month to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, according to the signed document filed in federal court in Los Angeles. He had previously pleaded not guilty, but in exchange for the guilty pleas prosecutors have agreed to drop three additional counts of distribution of ketamine and two counts of falsifying records. Plasencia's attorneys emphasized in an email after he reached his agreement that he 'was not treating Matthew Perry at the time of his death and the ketamine that caused Mr. Perry's death was not provided by Dr. Plasencia.' The remaining charges can carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and there is no guarantee he'll get less, but he's likely to. Plasencia has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest in August. He will not be sentenced until a future hearing. The only remaining defendant who has not reached an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office is Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors allege is a drug dealer known as the 'Ketamine Queen' and sold Perry the lethal dose. Her trial is scheduled to begin next month. She has pleaded not guilty. According to prosecutors and co-defendants who reached their own deals, Plasencia illegally supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine starting about a month before his death on Oct. 28, 2023. According to a co-defendant, Plasencia in a text message called the actor a 'moron' who could be exploited for money. Perry's personal assistant, his friend, and another doctor all agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation as the government sought to make their case against larger targets, Plasencia and Sangha. None have been sentenced yet. Perry was found dead by the assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death. The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor in a legal but off-label treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him. Plasencia admitted in his plea agreement that another patient connected him with Perry, and that starting about a month before Perry's death, he illegally supplied the actor with 20 vials of ketamine totaling 100 mg of the drug, along with ketamine lozenges and syringes. He admitted to enlisting another doctor, Mark Chavez, to supply the drug for him, according to the court filings. 'I wonder how much this moron will pay,' Plasencia texted Chavez, according to Chavez's plea agreement. After selling the drugs to Perry for $4,500, Plasencia allegedly asked Chavez if he could keep supplying them so they could become Perry's 'go-to,' prosecutors said. Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on 'Friends,' when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC's megahit. Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
CTV News
42 minutes ago
- CTV News
Saskatchewan RCMP members, both active and retired, demand answers surrounding Rhonda Blackmore's removal
WATCH: Former and current RCMP members are expressing frustration over the dismissal of former Commanding Officer Rhonda Blackmore. Angela Stewart explains.
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Shackled, abused and humiliated: Report paints grim picture of life in ICE detention
Starving men with their hands tied behind their backs, forced to eat out of Styrofoam containers "like dogs." Women incarcerated alongside men and denied access to showers or medical care. Dozens of people shackled and left on buses for days on end. These are just a few of the stories documented in a new report on the conditions at three migrant detention centres in Florida amid U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. "I would say the key phrase that would come to mind is, you know, fundamentally abusive," Belkis Wille of Humans Rights Watch (HRW) told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams. The report by HRW, Americans for Immigrant Justice and Sanctuary of the South paints a gruesome picture of abuse, overcrowding and denial of medical care at the Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center and Federal Detention Center. The U.S. government vehemently denies the allegations, and says it is, in fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are being victimized. In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary, accused the report's authors of contributing to a political environment that's creating uptick in assaults against the "men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens." Massive surge in detentions Since being elected to his second term in the White House, Trump has enacted a program of mass deportations from the U.S. Acting on a presidential executive order, ICE agents, often masked, have been conducting raids all over the U.S. and clashing with protesters in the process. As of April, 45 out of 181 authorized detention facilities across the country have exceeded their contractual capacity, the HRW report says. The detained include dozens of Canadians. The Trump administration has characterised ICE detainees as violent criminals. But ICE's own data shows that of the nearly 58,000 people in detention nationwide, 71.7 per cent have no criminal convictions and 47 per cent have no pending criminal charges. Some of the detainees interviewed in the report, Wille says, came to the U.S. legally under recently cancelled Temporary Protected Status programs and were arrested while attending their annual immigration appointments. Detainees describe being shackled on buses Wille's interviews with detainees at Krome took place in a small visitation room that she described as clean and organized. But each detainee she spoke to told her that, just a few weeks prior, that room was being used as a holding cell. "This was a tiny room with just a desk and two or three chairs," she said. "People were held there for a week or more because the processing cells were so full." Overcrowding, the report notes, is a major problem at all three facilities. Cells designed for 66 people, she said, are instead crammed with as many as 140. People are being kept for weeks in processing cells that are only meant to hold them for a couple of hours. Those waiting there, she says, are forced to sleep on concrete floors with "frigid air blasting." That's if they're lucky enough to get a cell at all. "Many of them were arriving at a time when Krome was so overcapacity that they were actually kept shackled in buses for, you know, in some cases, days," she said. "No access to a shower, barely any access to the bathroom, very limited access to food and water." Because of overcrowding, the report says women are being held at Krome, a men's facility, in rooms with exposed toilets visible to men in the adjacent cells. "When they asked to get access to medical care, to their much-needed drugs, they were told by the staff at the facility, 'We can't give you any medical support because this is a male-only facility. And we can't give you access to the showers or to outdoor spaces for recreation time because this a male-only facility,'" Wille said. DHS told CBC women at Krome are kept separate from male inmates and provided with medical care "like all detainees." Diabetes, HIV medications allegedly withheld Denial of medical care, the report found, is not limited to women. "I spoke to one man who needs four insulin shots a day because of his diabetes," Wille said. "He was given less and less access to his insulin and finally was stripped of all access to this insulin for a period of five days, and then he collapsed and ended up in the hospital." The report's authors also spoke to HIV-positive men who say they were denied their medications until the virus, long kept under wraps, became detectable again. This can't be blamed on a lack of resources, Wille said, noting that ICE just saw a major funding boost. Nor, she says, is it a matter of detainees falling through the cracks. "These are prisons that do have medical staff there. They have individuals who have diagnosed conditions, where they have all of this on record," she said. "Denying them their access to medical care, that is a choice." Forced to eat with their hands tied The same is true, she says, of the abuse detainees say they're subject to. Two of the detainees interviewed described being moved, along with other men, from one facility to another, and kept for hours in a transfer cell with no food, their hands tied behind their backs. When their lunch arrived in Styrofoam containers, the men begged the guards to let them eat. "But the guards refused to unshackle them," Wille said. "So the men had to, with their mouths, basically lean over and eat from these boxes on chairs with their hands tied behind their backs." In the report, both men described the incident as dehumanizing. "We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs," Harpinder Chauhan, a migrant from Britain, said in the report. The report says the abuses documented at the facilities are violations of international conventions as well as ICE's own policies. It called on the Trump administration to dramatically reduce the number of people in custody. But McLaughlin at DHS called the report's claims "lies" and said all detainees are provided with meals and medical treatment.
