SAN DIEGO – A YouTube personality known as "McSkillet" was identified Friday as the 18-year-old man who was behind the wheel of a high-end sports car involved in a triple fatal wrong-way crash in the San Diego area.
Trevor J. Heitmann was killed in the fiery high-speed wreck that left his vehicle "fragmented and ... strewn across" the 805 Freeway in the University City area Thursday afternoon, the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office said.
Earlier in the day, students at La Jolla Country Day school told KTLA sister station KSWB in San Diego the teen driver was Heitmann – their former classmate and the online gamer who went by "McSkillet."
Students expressed shock and sadness over the reported death; some said they first heard about it through his close friends.
Heitmann's neighbors told KSWB they saw San Diego police at his house Thursday.
His death was widely reported in industry publications and online, with many gaming enthusiasts on Twitter identifying the driver as the popular YouTuber, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The teen was behind the wheel of a 2014 McLaren that was traveling south in the carpool lane of the northbound 805 around 4:35 p.m. when his vehicle slammed head-on into an SUV, authorities said. The SUV burst into flames, and both occupants – a 43-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl – were later found dead inside, according to the medical examiner's office.
The Union-Tribune identified the victims in the SUV as mother and daughter.
“At the time of the crash, he could have been going over 100 mph,” CHP Officer Jake Sanchez told the newspaper. “The McLaren is one of the fastest cars in the world.”
Heitmann died from blunt force trauma, the medical examiner's office said.
The initial fiery wreck triggered a series of chain-reaction collisions involving at least six other vehicles. One other person was hospitalized with serious injuries, but is expected to survive.
The northbound freeway was shut down for several hours, bringing the evening rush-hour commute to a halt.
According to KSWB, Heitmann rose to prominence as a "skins trader" in the video game "Counter Strike: Global Offensive."
He had earned a hefty sum from e-sports products, but was recently banned from making them, according to the Union-Tribune, which cited numerous posts on Twitter.
Heitmann also had a YouTube channel with more than 875,000 subscribers, and many of his videos have been viewed hundreds of thousand of times. His last video appeared to have been posted some five months ago.
In one video, from December 2017, Heitmann discussed his vehicle, a 641-horsepower black McLaren 650S, which he said "beats just about every other super car in a drag race."
Students told KSWB Heitmann was known to drive the luxury English sports car.
It was unclear what led up to the wrong-way collision, but about 30 minutes prior to that crash, a McLaren slammed through the gates of an elementary school in the Carmel Valley area before speeding off, according to the San Diego Police Department.
The driver then got out of the vehicle, smashed a school building window and then sped off, witnesses reported.
Sanchez confirmed to the newspaper that CHP investigators are looking into whether those incidents are related.
