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San Diego, CA – An 18-year-old video gamer and YouTube star killed a 12-year-old girl and her mother, along with himself on Thursday, when he slammed his sports car into their vehicle at more than 100 miles per hour.
Police said the wrong-way, head-on crash occurred when 18-year-old Trevor Heitmann drove his $250,000 2015 British McLaren 650S into oncoming traffic on Route 805 at speeds that likely reached triple digits, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Heitmann slammed the sports car head-on into a 2010 Hyundai SUV driven by 43-year-old Aileen Pizarro, who was traveling with her 12-year-old daughter, Aryana Pizarro.
The devastating impact instantly caused a massive fireball, and the vehicles disintegrated and hurled burning wreckage across the roadway, The Washington Post reported.
Other drivers smashed into the debris as they tried to avoid the inferno that suddenly appeared in the middle of the highway.
Pizarro, Aryana, and Heitmann were all killed in the wreck, and another person was seriously injured by flying debris, police said.
Prior to the fatal crash, Heitmann also smashed through a metal gate at Ashley Falls Elementary School, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Witnesses said the driver then exited the sports car and broke out a window of the school before he sped away.
The 18 year old also allegedly crashed into a family member’s vehicle in Carmel Valley earlier in the day.
Heitmann, who was known to his Twitter and YouTube followers as “McSkillet,” made a small fortune by selling videos and trading “skins” for the video game “Counter Strike: Global Offensive.”
Skins provide cosmetic changes to items in video games.
But his lucrative business was recently shut down by the Washington gambling commission, which confiscated an estimated $200,000 in skins from Heitmann, and prohibited him from being able to acquire more in the future, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Pizarro’s son, 22-year-old Dominic Pizarro, said that his mother and sister were traveling to Orange County when they were killed. He became concerned when they didn’t return as planned, and learned about the fiery crash online.
His grandfather soon confirmed Dominic’s worst fears.
“I lost it,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune.
He described his little sister as a “girly-girl,” but said she was also “tough.”
“She was alive with energy,” Dominic said. He last spoke with Aryana the day before the crash, when she showed him all of her new school supplies during a video chat.
Aryana, an aspiring jazz singer, would have started the seventh grade on Monday.
Dominic said that he and his sister were raised by their mother and grandfather, and that Pizarro was working as a therapist for abused children who had been removed from their homes.
“[She] did everything for us,” Dominic said of his mother. “She was selfless. She didn’t think about herself at all.”
He said that Pizarro’s work helped to give children hope for a better future.
“She loved to work with them and tell them they were worth something,” Dominic said. “She went out of her way to bring light to them in hopeless situations.”
Pizarro’s longtime boyfriend, LeRoy Phillips, said she always put her children first.
“She could raise three kids and put herself through school to get her master’s – by herself – just to give them the best she can give them,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune.
A fundraising campaign established to help Pizarro’s family in the wake of their loss had raised almost $55,000 as of Monday morning.