Famous faces lost: Paul Walker
American actor Paul Walker died on 30th November in an horrific car accident in Los Angeles.
Walker, 40, was killed when the red Porsche sports car he was traveling in slammed into a tree and caught fire around 3:30 pm (2330 GMT) in the town of Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles county, local media reported.
Driving the car was Walker’s close friend and business partner Roger Rodas, a former racecar driver who also lost his life in the accident.
Prior to the crash, the pair had attended an event to raise money for victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines for Reach Out Worldwide (ROWW), a non-profit disaster relief group they founded together.
It is understood they decided to take the racecar for a spin after visiting an upmarket auto shop owned by Rodas, where one of the employees was having trouble reversing the car into the garage.
The men were driving a mere three hundred metres from the site of the ROWW event, in an area with a speed limit of 45 miles per hour (70 kilometres per hour).
Their joy ride lasted only twenty minutes before Rodas lost control of the vehicle and slammed into a tree.
Up and down the road near the crash site burned rubber and doughnut marks were visible, suggesting a car had smoked its tires in a figure-8 formation.
The Sheriff's Department has stated that speed was a factor in the crash though they could not confirm if the road marks belonged to Rodas’ Ferrari.
‘I don't know if the marks in the road are related to the crash,’ said Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Brian Allen.
Upon making contact with the tree, the car reportedly went up in flames.
Witnesses are said to have recognised Walker and one onlooker even tried to pull him from the wreckage, the local Santa Clarita Valley Signal newspaper reported.
Police say Walker’s body was burned so badly that dental records must be retrieved so the coroner can identify the body.
Fans and fellow actors on Sunday mourned the death of Walker, best known as undercover agent Brian O'Connor in the "Fast and Furious" action movies.
"It is with a truly heavy heart that we must confirm that Paul Walker passed away today in a tragic car accident while attending a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide," the late actor's publicists wrote on his Facebook account on Saturday.
The publicists wrote that they were "stunned and saddened beyond belief by this news."
Fans poured out their grief on social media, including the franchise's pages on Instagram and Facebook.
More than one million people had either liked or commented in various languages on the death notice on Walker's Facebook page.
"Fast and Furious will not be the same without you Paul!!" wrote fan Sedat Yildirim.
Walker, 40, appeared in all but one of the six movies in the popular franchise, and was a leading protagonist along with Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez.
At the time of the crash, cast and crew were taking a Thanksgiving break from filming the seventh "Fast and Furious" movie, which had been scheduled for release in July 2014.
The crew had filmed in Atlanta and were set to travel to Abu Dhabi in January, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
In real life Walker raced cars, described himself on Twitter as an "outdoorsman, ocean addict," and "adrenaline junkie," and did many of his own movie stunts.
Walker is survived by daughter Meadow, 15, who had recently moved from her mother’s home in Hawaii to live with her father in California.
