A popular “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” player reportedly died Thursday in the wrong-way crash that also claimed the lives of a mother and her 12-year-old daughter.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the fatal crash occurred northbound on Interstate 805 in San Diego County, California. A witness told police that a driver, later identified as Trevor Heitmann, 18, was traveling the wrong way in a carpool lane at 100 mph when he collided head-on with an SUV, killing Aileen Pizarro, 43, and her daughter, Aryana Pizarro. California Highway Patrol Officer Jake Sanchez said a fourth person who was seriously injured in Thursday’s crash is expected to survive.
Online, Heitmann went by “OG McSkillet” and boasted 900,000 subscribers on YouTube. According to Polygon, Heitmann was probably best known for owning popular trading site CSGO Magic, a site that put him in the center of the game’s skin trading community. (Skins are digital items which allow users to customize their in-game characters.) In 2016, Valve, the company that develops the first-person shooter game, had the website shut down amid their crackdown on gambling sites.
PCGamer explained the CS:GO gambling controversy in the following article:
Tens of thousands of people bet in-game items from CS:GO on these third-party websites, and their won and lost digital goods have real-world value within the Steam Community Market. Moral and legal murkiness surrounds these enterprises, many of which are based outside the US, and many of which are not licensed, regulated gambling entities. […] A class-action claim against Valve is one of the first signs that this issue will draw broader legal attention.
Polygon reported that it was in June when Valve banned Heitmann from online trading, meaning he couldn’t sell the digital items and weapons stored in his inventory. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that online speculation suggests the e-sport industry afforded Heitmann his lavish lifestyle—which included a 2015 British McLaren 650S sports car that cost at him least $250,000. Some YouTube personalities indicated that the recent ban resulted in him losing at least $100,000.
Police believe Heitmann was involved in another auto-related incident Thursday afternoon. In a statement issued to CNN, Ashley Falls School “a car drove through the side gate and an individual got out of the car and threw an item at a door, breaking a window.” There were no injuries in that ordeal.
[Featured image: Trevor Heitmann/San Diego Police Department; Aileen Pizarro, Aryana Pizarro/Facebook]
