Paul Walker’s Horrifying Final Moments
Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesFilming on Furious 7 hadn’t wrapped when Paul Walker died, so his brother, Cody Walker, stood in as his body double.
Before Fast & Furious was a wild, star-fueled, action/espionage franchise, it was a movie about guys racing cars really fast. The movie’s success was likely enhanced by the fact that its lead actor, Paul Walker, was a kindhearted, charismatic philanthropist who shared his character’s fondness for cruising down the road at top speed, a penchant that would eventually kill him.
After six installments to the franchise, Paul Walker was riding high. The films were breaking box office records, and Walker was even beginning to produce films of his own. But that would all come crashing down on Nov. 30, 2013, when Paul Walker died in a car accident.
That day, Walker had been at a toy drive event for his disaster relief charity, Reach Out Worldwide. Held at a high-performance car shop that Walker and his friend Roger Rodas owned, the duo wanted to use the event to help survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
Just before 3:30 p.m., Walker and Rodas left the event in a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT — a car known for being hard to handle — with Rodas behind the wheel and Walker riding shotgun.
Rodas, much like his friend, liked to drive fast. Pushing the Porsche to nearly 100 miles per hour, they were only a few hundred yards from the shop when the situation took a sharp turn. Rodas lost control of the vehicle, and it crashed into a curb, a tree, a light post, and then another tree before bursting into flames.
As the stunned crowd watched in horror, Rodas’ son ran over to investigate, unaware that it was his own father laying in the burning rubble. He only realized this after noting the model of the car.
An investigation into the recent celebrity death by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department concluded that the car’s speed was a major factor in the death of its occupants.
Meadow Walker, Paul’s daughter, filed a wrongful death suit against Porsche in 2015, blaming the vehicle’s design flaws for the accident. Ultimately, though, a thorough examination found “no pre-existing conditions that would have caused this collision.”
Furious 7 had also been in the middle of filming at the time of Paul Walker’s death, but the film couldn’t move forward without its lead star. Rather than cancel the project, however, producers asked Cody Walker, Paul’s brother, to stand in as a body double and used computer technology to imprint Paul’s face over Cody’s.
“My love for cars, my love for travel — it’s all from him and I miss him,” Cody Walker said. “I miss him every day.”
