Maybe we should fear both dangers?

Hours before dying in a fiery car crash, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to his colleagues, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and that he needed to go "off the rada[r]" for a bit.

The email was sent around 1 p.m. on Monday, June 17. At 4:20 a.m. the following morning, Hastings died when his Mercedes, traveling at high speeds, smashed into a tree and caught on fire. He was 33.

"I was just coming northbound on Highland and I seen a car, like, going really fast and all of a sudden I seen it jackknife," witness to the scene, Luis Cortez, told KTLA.

Authorities reported that a single passenger inside this vehicle had died but that their identity couldn't be immediately determined.

Another neighbor described hearing a huge explosion drawing him and several others outside their homes.

One man was seen using a watering hose in his best efforts to stifle the engulfing flames.

In a terrifying display around 4:15 am witnesses say his vehicle collided with a tree in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles before bursting into flames.

The vehicle's engine ejected 50 to 60 yards from the scene before landing near a telephone pole, according to neighbor and film maker Gary Grossman who said he couldn't have written a scene like this for a movie.

 

[Certainly to an award winning reporter "dropping off the radar" means running traffic lights at high speed late at night to blow up running into a tree with your engine skidding off the road. Happens all the time - was probably just a bit too wound up so to speak]