Samuel Lloyd, Gemmel Moore's best friend and roommate broke his silence and spoke before a recent community meeting about Moore's death in West Hollywood.
“Drugs for everyone is a struggle,” an emotional Lloyd quipped. “You know it never ends well. It always get worse. You’re always going to hit rock bottom. This man [Ed Bcuck] went out there searching for other men that were struggling and on the streets and had no money. I mean men who had never experienced drugs before. Gemmel was scared. He was scared of this man. He came and he laid in my arms and cried and he was scared. He was scared that this man was going to hurt him. And he went to the police station and they told him to go away.”
Gemmel Moore, 26, was found dead of a crystal meth overdose in Democratic donor Ed Buck’s West Hollywood home on July 27. His death was immediately classified as an accidental methamphetamine overdose by the coroner. 19 days later after Moore’s journal was publicly published and appeared in news reports, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau opened an investigation.
In his journal, Moore wrote, “I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” a December entry reads. “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy.”
“My life is at an alltime [sic] high right now & I mean that from all ways. I ended up back at Buck [sic] house again and got munipulated [sic] into slamming again. I even went to the point where I was forced to doing 4 within a 2day [sic] period. This man is crazy and its [sic] sad. Will I ever get help?”
“Slamming” refers to gay men injecting drugs such as mephedrone, GHB, or crystal meth.
Moore’s last entry, dated December 3, 2016, reads, “If it didn’t hurt so bad, I’d kill myself, but I’ll let Ed Buck do it for now.”