On June 19, 2016, 27-year-old Anton Yelchin was killed in a "freak accident" when his Jeep Grand Cherokee crushed him outside his Los Angeles home.
dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock PhotoAnton Yelchin died in 2016, two years after this photo of him was taken at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Anton Yelchin’s death in 2016 came as a total shock. At the time, the 27-year-old actor seemed to be on an upward trajectory. He’d been acting since he was a young child, but he’d gotten his big break by playing Pavel Chekov in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Good things seemed to be ahead. But then, Yelchin’s life was cut tragically short.
In June 2016, Yelchin parked his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee on the steep hill that led down to his Studio City home in Los Angeles, and then walked down the slope toward his house. But Yelchin’s car was not in park. As it turned out, Fiat Chrysler had recalled 1.1 million vehicles, including that Jeep model, just months before because customers had found the gear shifters problematic. Indeed, these gear shifters had already led to dozens of injuries and more than 200 crashes.
But Yelchin apparently didn’t know that. As he walked down the hill, the car rolled backward toward him. Before he could move out of the way, it crushed him against a brick mailbox pillar and a security fence.
His friends, concerned that he had missed a rehearsal on June 18, 2016, found him around 1 a.m. on June 19, 2016. But it was too late. Anton Yelchin had died shortly after he was hit by his car.
From St. Petersburg To Hollywood
Anton Yelchin was born on March 11, 1989, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. But he and his family didn’t stay in the Soviet Union for long. His parents, who were prominent ice skaters in their home country, were also Jewish, and they decided to leave the U.S.S.R. due to religious oppression and their frustration with the Soviet system.
Cinematic/Alamy Stock PhotoAnton Yelchin, seen here in the 2002 series Taken, began his career as a child actor.
“We were afraid for our son,” Yelchin’s father told the Los Angeles Times in 1989, shortly after they arrived in the U.S. “It is a very bad situation over there. I would get angry, too — I’d say, ‘Why should we have to buy things on the black market? Why should we have to stand in line?'”
In Los Angeles, Anton Yelchin soon began to find work as a child actor. He appeared on ER and Curb Your Enthusiasm and, as he got older, booked more prominent roles in films like Alpha Dog (2006) and Charlie Bartlett (2007). But Yelchin’s big break came in 2009, when he was cast as Pavel Chekov in J.J. Abrams’ film reboot of Star Trek.
The reviews for Star Trek were largely positive, and seemed to mark an important point in Yelchin’s career. He would appear in the next two Star Trek films, Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016), as well as several other movies. But sadly, Anton Yelchin died in 2016.
Anton Yelchin’s Death In A Freak Accident
Album/Alamy Stock PhotoAnton Yelchin died years after getting his big break as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek (2009).
On the night of June 18, 2016, Anton Yelchin’s friends began to suspect that something was wrong when he didn’t show up to a rehearsal. They went to his Los Angeles house in Studio City to check on him — and found the actor crushed between his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, a brick mailbox pillar, and his security fence at 1:10 a.m. on June 19, 2016. Anton Yelchin was soon pronounced dead that morning at the age of 27.
An investigation found that Yelchin had not put his car in park, but instead left it in neutral. As a result, the vehicle rolled down the hill, struck him, and pinned him against the fence and the mailbox pillar.
Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles Police Department told CBS News that Anton Yelchin’s cause of death was “blunt traumatic asphyxia” and that the actor had died in “just one of those freak accidents.” But his death had been relatively quick — a coroner’s investigation also found that, due to his injuries, Yelchin had likely died in about one minute.
YouTubeThe gate where Anton Yelchin died after being crushed by his own car in 2016.
In the aftermath of Anton Yelchin’s death, tributes for him poured out across Hollywood. Zachary Quinto, who played Spock in the Star Trek reboot, called Yelchin “one of the most open and intellectually curious people I have ever had the pleasure to know.” Felicity Jones, who starred with Yelchin in the film Like Crazy, wrote, “A world without Anton is a lesser place. He touched everyone he met with his honesty and humanity. We have lost a unique and profound soul.” And J.J. Abrams, who had cast Yelchin as Chekov, wrote in tribute to him: “You were kind. You were funny as hell, and supremely talented.”
But not everyone bought that Anton Yelchin’s death had been just an ordinary “freak accident.” Indeed, media speculation about a serious fault in his car began soon after he died, with NPR reporting that Fiat Chrysler had recalled 1.1 million vehicles with a “monostable shifter” that April. This gear shift had made it difficult for drivers to know when their car was in drive or park or neutral, and it had already caused 41 injuries, 212 crashes, and 308 reports of property damage.
That August, Yelchin’s parents sued Fiat Chrysler.
“With unbelievable grief, we decided to come here to prevent other families with the same tragedy,” his father said in an emotional press conference. “Anton was our only son — a remarkable human being. It’s against nature when a parent has to bury their own child.”
The Settlement With Fiat Chrysler Following Anton Yelchin’s Death
Jeremy/Wikimedia CommonsA 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the same kind of car that caused Anton Yelchin’s death in 2016.
In their lawsuit, Anton Yelchin’s parents contested that their son “was crushed and lingered alive for some time, trapped and suffocating until his death” after his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled into him. It may have taken just one minute for him to die, but they contended that Anton Yelchin’s death was still agonizing. And while Yelchin was sent an initial recall notice about his faulty gear shift back in May, his family’s attorney argued that the notice came “way too late.”
In 2018, they reached a confidential settlement with Fiat Chrysler, the company that had manufactured Yelchin’s 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The company stated that they were “pleased that we’ve reached an amicable resolution in this matter,” and that they continued to “extend our deepest sympathies to the Yelchin family for their tragic loss.”
Barry King/Alamy Stock PhotoAnton Yelchin’s grave at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
But the Yelchin family also had other ways to remember their son. In 2019, the documentary Love, Antosha, an homage to Anton Yelchin, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It covered both Yelchin’s artistic pursuits and his private battle with cystic fibrosis, which Yelchin had been planning to share with the public shortly before his death. In acknowledgement of this, his parents also created the Anton Yelchin Foundation and donated $1 million to the University of Southern California (USC) Center for Cystic Fibrosis – Adult Care at Keck Hospital.
Ultimately, Anton Yelchin will be remembered as a talented and promising young actor whose life was taken far too soon. He will also be remembered, in the words of his Star Trek co-star John Cho, who played Hikaru Sulu, as “a true artist — curious, beautiful, courageous.”
After reading about Anton Yelchin’s death, go inside some of the most shocking deaths in the infamous 27 Club. Or, learn about the tragic deaths of some of SNL’s biggest stars.
