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Race

3rd man nearly overdosing at ed buck’s house leads to arrest (finally!)

September 20, 2019

“I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” Gemmel Moore wrote in journal, December 2016. “Ed Buck is the one to thank.”

The next July, Moore was found dead of a crystal meth overdose in the West Hollywood home of major California Democratic donor, Ed Buck. Immediately classified as accidental methamphetamine overdose by the coroner, police found drug paraphernalia “littered” around Buck’s home, including pipes, syringes and plastic bags. Soon after, Moore’s journal was published by Jasmine Cannick, leading to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau opening an investigation. Under DA Jackie Lacey, assisted by Assistant Head Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum, the DA’’s office declined to file charges against Buck in connection to Moore’s death, citing insufficient evidence.

This past January, a second man, Timothy Dean, 55, was found dead in Buck’s apartment of an overdose on methamphetamine,just like Moore. Both men were Black, and the similarities between their deaths and curious interactions with Buck were amplified by activists who demanded actions and accountability for Buck, the common denominator between all of it.

A man identified in court papers as “Joe Doe” went to Buck’s home where Buck “personally and deliberately” administered a large dose of methamphetamine. A week later, on September 11, Buck once again injected Doe with “two dangerously large” doses of the drug. Undermining his attempts to leave, Doe eventually fled the apartment, calling 911 from a gas station before being taken to the hospital. After searching the home, Sheriff’s investigators found hundreds of photos of men in “compromising positions.”

“The full scope of his consistent malicious behavior is unknown,” prosecutors said. “It is only a matter of time before another one of these vulnerable young men dies of an overdose.”

“From his home, in a position of power, Buck manipulates his victims into participating in his sexual fetishes,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. “These fetishes include supplying and personally administering dangerously large doses of narcotics to his victims. … Not deterred by the senseless deaths of Moore and Dean, the defendant nearly killed a third victim last week.”

Arrested on Tuesday, Buck was charged with three felony counts of maintaining a drug house, administering methamphetamine, and battery that caused serious injury. According to Out.com, Buck will also be charged in the deaths of Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean.

“I’ve been around for a while and people just don’t value our lives, just Black people period,” Cannick says. “Our lives aren’t valued in the way other people’s lives are. Then when you break that down into Black lesbian women, Black gay men, Black queer and trans people, that is a whole other dichotomy. If they were white gay men, people would’ve been falling all over themselves. If it was white women, people would’ve been falling all over themselves.”

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