Posted on 06/21/2013 10:56:51 AM PDT by SE Mom
LOS ANGELES (KTLA) — The crash that killed journalist Michael Hastings was ruled an accident by police, but conspiracy theories continued to circulate on Friday.
Hastings, 33, was killed in a fiery solo-vehicle crash in Hancock Park early Tuesday morning.
...Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs told KTLA that he received an email from Hastings on Monday.
Biggs had known Hastings since 2008, when the journalist was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan.
“On Monday morning, I woke up and I got an email, and it’s very panicked,” Biggs said.
He was blind-copied on the email, which was sent to Hastings’ colleagues.
In part, it said that the feds were interviewing his close friends and associates, and that he was onto a big story and needed to get off the radar.
The FBI has denied that Hastings was ever under investigation.
“It alarmed me very much,” Biggs said. “I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me,” he said.
The email was sent just before 1 p.m. on Monday, 15 hours before the deadly crash.
Breaking news photographer Scott Lane happened to be less than a mile from the scene of the crash, and shot video of the fiery aftermath.
Video taken from his car’s dashcam also caught what appeared to be Hastings’ Mercedes minutes before the crash, speeding through a red light.
More than 30 seconds pass after Hastings’ car goes by, and no other cars pass through the intersection.
“There’s no cars that are following him,” Lane said. “He flies by and 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds goes by… No cars are following him.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Within a block of where I live a car crashed into a tree at relatively high speed (failed to make a 90 degree turn in the road) and the whole car burned up, unfortunately with the driver inside. People tried to extract the driver but heat was too intense.
There was another crash not too long ago nearby where the car caught fire with the driver still inside.
You don't?
Myself and 4 friends almost died because of one of these mercedes a-holes.
I was in downtown boston years ago, my buddies crammed into my small car.
Light turns green, i hesitate for some reason, then a mercedes SCREAMS past the front of my car doing like 120 mph.
If i hit the gas when the light turned green it would have been a mess, real bad. we all would have died.
His car flipped about 7 times, i drove past and kept going.
F him
Is that wrong?
Most likely it was the center fuel tank that exploded.
“There’s no cars that are following him,” Lane said. “He flies by and 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds goes by… No cars are following him.”
Maybe he was trying to evade an overhead Predator drone.
Crazy? Not as crazy as overseas where dashcams are a way of life. In Russia and Thailand, they are big for insurance/legal purposes. People pull out in front of cars w bicycles, mopeds or just jump in front of them to try to get hit and then demand cash from the people who hit them. Makes for great dashcam websites.
touche’
At that time of night he was most likely drunk out of his mind and all jacked up about something.
I was wondering what the deal was with all of those Russian dash cam vids on youtube.
There are tons of them.
You obviously don’t understand that what he was doing was far more important than what you and your friends were doing, and more important than your lives.
May 7, 2013 A stretch limousine that burst into flames on a San Francisco Bay bridge, killing five women inside,
Seems that their was one extra passenger and the load burst the back airbags...causing the back end to drag and split the petrol tank which exploded.
A c250 is like a 4 cylinder. I looked at them and went pfffftttt. I need a bigger engine.
Stentor ~:” Doesn’t pay to come to the public attention of the Man. With no evidence whatever, I vote for Breitbarting as the cause. “
I agree , especially if he was doing a story about David Petraeus , Director of CIA (read as ‘spooks’).
Car accidents happen frequently , especially if the throttle is jambed , and the brakes failed ( speeding thru a red light).
While I don’t necessarily consider it part of a conspiracy, it is not above the realm of possibility, especially when it comes to ‘spooks’.
The “Bourne Legacy and Ultamatum “ series comes immediately to mind .
sounds eerily like the Arkansas “accidental” deaths during the days of the Clintons.
Yup. Makes for an interesting suicide.
thanks for the visual!
I can tell you from experience that this isn’t far fetched:
You can hack a car, since a car is a computer.
Why is it that I know this?
Someone tried to hack my son’s insulin pump, and succeeded. He pushed the max bolus limit to 100 units of insulin. My son caught it when he heard the beeps coming from the pump. If the hacker had been a little more skilled, he may have been able to silence the pump before changing the max bolus and then initiated a massive bolus.
I know for a fact you can hack any heavy commercial aircraft and lock out the pilot - Boeing or Airbus. I saw it demonstrated at a BlackHat conference, and I have the powerpoint if you want it. The entire purpose of the demo was to illustrate the complete lack of network safeguards on most programmable vital systems.
So, could someone have hacked his ride, tracked it, and then locked out his brake while maxing his accelerator?
Maybe, and I’d go so far as to say probably.
Did it happen?
Depends on whether you can wipe a black box remotely. His model probably had one.
C250 has 200 hp from a turbo four. The BMW 328 weighs about the same and has 40 more horsepower, also from a turbo four.
The C250 appeals more to the luxury crowd.
There are 55 onboard computers on late model Lexus cars. Mercedes is probably similar. The Techstream factory computer interface can do all kinds of stuff. Including ABS/VSC and throttle.I believe a device connected to the CAN bus and hidden under the dash could be used to remotely do most anything.
So, theoretically possible in the analysis of an automotive professional, different manufacturer notwithstanding.
Was Hastings a threat? Opinion on this breaks down between those hypnotized by Kardashians and those observing encroaching surveillance with encumbent arrogance.
Does the military-intelligence security state (regardless of the temporary occupant of the White House) present as ruthless?
Porter Goss' chief of staff John Millis called Deutch the worst DCI for counterintelligence, and Clinton, the worst president for same.
Millis sucked a shotgun in a bathtub of the Breezeway Motel in Alexandria.
Gary Webb was an inconvenience with CIA-crack allegations. Suicide.
Ron Brown flew into a mountain and developed a hole in his skull.
TWA 800, OKCBomb, the convenient humiliation of FBI counterterrorist chief John O'Neill (his classified documents stolen at an FBI seminar), and more, suggesting it is hazardous to one's health to obstruct the operation du jour.
The advances in simulated accidental death and simulated natural death have come a long way from Karen Silkwood and that little incident twenty years ago in Fort Marcy Park.
In light of Utah and College Park, Prism and Echelon, Stuxnet and Snowden, drones and ARGUS, is it out of the realm of possibility a computer capture and fatal manipulation led to a high-five and Miller Time at the Black Video Arcade?
All watched over by machines of infinite grace.
It happens.
In my last job I saw a number of files involving vehicles which had literally crashed and burned (including one head-on where a witness described seeing an explosion and mushroom cloud!)
One particular solo accident had a teenager wrap a new Toyota around a tree off the freeway. It caught fire and the wreck was so mangled there was no way anyone on the scene could get him out.
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