A decade after his death, the final Instagram post from Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin has resurfaced online, sparking an outpouring of tributes from fans.
What happened to him
On 19 June 2016, Yelchin, 27, was killed outside his Studio City home in Los Angeles when his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled down the sloped driveway and crushed him against a brick mailbox pillar and security fence. He had parked the vehicle on the hill leading to his home before walking down toward the property. Concerned friends found him at around 1am after he failed to show up to a rehearsal, but it was too late to save him.
The cause of the accident
Fiat Chrysler had recalled 1.1 million vehicles, including Yelchin's model, just months earlier due to faulty gear shifters, which had already caused dozens of injuries and more than 200 crashes. An investigation later found Yelchin had accidentally left the vehicle in neutral rather than park, and that the defective gear shift mechanism was directly responsible for the car rolling. Lieutenant Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles Police Department told CBS News that Yelchin's cause of death was blunt traumatic asphyxia, describing it as "just one of those freak accidents." A coroner's inquest determined he died within approximately a minute of being struck.
His final post
Yelchin's last Instagram post was a selfie taken with the ocean in the background. Since resurfacing, the post has been flooded with tributes from fans marking the anniversary of his death.
His career
Yelchin began acting as a child, appearing in ER and Curb Your Enthusiasm before moving into higher-profile films such as Alpha Dog and Charlie Bartlett. His breakout role came in 2009, when he was cast as Pavel Chekov in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, a role he reprised in Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond, released the same year as his death.
