Entertainment News3 min(s) read
A decade after his death in a freak accident, the last post of a promising young Hollywood star has resurfaced.
On June 19, 2016, Anton Yelchin, 27, was killed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee crushed him outside his own home in Los Angeles.
According to reports from the time, Anton had parked his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee on the steep hill that led down to his Studio City home in Los Angeles before walking down the sloped driveway towards his home.
However, due to a major manufacturer error, the car was not in park and rolled down, crushing him against a brick mailbox pillar and a security fence.
He was found at around 1AM after concerned friends went looking for him when he did not turn up to a rehearsal. Heartbreakingly, it was too late, as Anton died shortly after he was hit by the car.
Alarmingly, Fiat Chrysler had recently recalled 1.1 million vehicles, including Anton’s Jeep model, just months before because customers had major problems with the gear shifts. The faulty gear shifters had already led to dozens of injuries and more than 200 crashes by the time the young actor died.
Months after his death, an investigation found that Anton had accidentally put his car in neutral instead of park. It was later proved that the vehicle’s defective gear shifting is what caused the car to roll down the hill and kill him.
Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles Police Department told CBS News that Anton’s cause of death was “blunt traumatic asphyxia” and that he had sadly died in “just one of those freak accidents.”
A coroner’s inquest also ruled that due to the nature of his injury, Anton died in around a minute.
Just months after the 10 year anniversary of his death, the star, who began acting as a child after his Jewish parents escaped the Soviet Union in 1989, has seen his last heartbreaking Instagram post resurface online to commemorate the Star Trek veteran.
The image was a selfie taken against a backdrop of an ocean, and fans have since flooded the comments section with tributes to the promising star.
Anton began acting as a child, starring in ER and Curb Your Enthusiasm and, as he got older, higher-budget films such as Alpha Dog (2006) and Charlie Bartlett (2007). His big break came in 2009, when he was cast as Pavel Chekov in J.J. Abrams’ film reboot of Star Trek.
Anton also featured in Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016), and several other box-office hits before his untimely death.
