Jun 18, 2013
Journalist Michael Hastings Dies in Fiery Crash / Hollywood RAW FOOTAGE
Written by City News Service - Journalist Michael Hastings, whose blunt Rolling
Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal led to the resignation of the
commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, died today in a car crash in Los
Angeles, according to the magazine and a website for which he worked. Officials with the Los Angeles County coroner's office could not
immediately confirm if the 33-year-old Hastings was the person who died around
4:25 a.m. when a car smashed into a tree and caught fire on Highland Avenue
near Melrose Avenue in the Hancock Park area. The circumstances of the crash were under investigation, but a cameraman
at the scene said the vehicle, a Mercedes, was being driven at a high rate of
speed when the crash occurred. The car's engine ended up 200 feet away from the
collision site, he said. Lt. Fred Corral of the coroner's office said the body was burned beyond
recognition, and the identity of the victim would not be known until at least
Wednesday. The Hancock Park crash was the only fatal car wreck in the city today,
according to police. However, Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed.com, issued a statement
announcing Hastings' death in a car accident in Los Angeles, saying the
journalist's BuzzFeed colleagues were ``shocked and devastated by the news that
Michael Hastings in gone.'' ``Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct
for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about
anything he covered from wars to politicians,'' Smith said. ``He wrote stories
that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great
stories that will go untold. Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague
and a joy to work with. Our thoughts are with Elise (his wife) and the rest of
his family and we are going to miss him.'' Hastings was perhaps most famous for his candid 2010 Rolling Stone
interview with McChrystal, who was then commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan
and was critical of the White House's oversight of the military. His comments
resulted in the general being summoned to Washington, D.C., and his eventual
resignation. Hastings was still a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. ``Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity, the sense that
there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or
greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell
those stories,'' Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana said in a story about
Hastings' death posted on the magazine's website. ``I'm sad that he won't be stopping by my office for any more short
visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours,'' Dana
said. ``He will be missed.'' Hastings wrote two books about war, including ``The Operators'' about
Afghanistan, and ``I Lost My Love in Baghdad,'' about Iraq. LOUDLABS NEWS