Casey Royer, an Orange County punk-rock pioneer, faces misdemeanor charges after overdosing on heroin while watching television with his 12-year-old son at home in Newport Beach on Thursday.
The boy ran to a neighbor's house to get help for his 52-year-old dad. While reviving him, authorities discovered what the Orange County district attorney's office referred to as “filthy” living conditions.
Royer has been charged with two counts of child abuse and endangerment, as well as use and being under the influence of a controlled substance. He could get up to two years behind bars if convicted.
Royer began his musical career in 1979, when the then-21-year-old played drums with Social Distortion. He joined the Adolescents the following year, and when Steve Soto's band began what would be a five-year hiatus in 1981, Royer formed D.I.
He has returned for shows and recordings that have reunited the Adolescents over the years, and Royer also played with ADZ in the early 1990s, but his main focus all along has been keeping D.I. alive.
Royer was among the local punk icons who appeared in the documentary We Were Feared, which was about the short run of the late, great Costa Mesa club the Cuckoo's Nest. He also turned out for the film's April 2010 premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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