Paul Walker, an actor best known for his role as a fast-driving cop opposite bad-guy-gone-good Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious movie series died on Saturday in a car crash in Santa Clarita, California, according to multiple sources. Walker was 40 years old.
News of the fatal crash spread first online after celebrity news site TMZ broke the story. Initially, most other news outlets and Twitter accounts picked it up as a report.
It was another hour before TMZ and then ABC News got confirmation from the actor's representatives.
TMZ's web site was inundated with traffic and, for a brief period of time, actually went down. When it returned, it appeared with this sentence added to the original story: "A rep for the actor confirms Paul died today in the crash after leaving a charity event."
According to the AP, Walker was a passenger in a friend's Porsche, which crashed into a light pole and tree before bursting into flames. Dramatic images of the wreckage soon spread on Twitter.
