YouTuber McSkillet kills two in San Diego 'wrong way' crash

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Video grab showing crash scene at Interstate 805 crashImage source, CBS News 8
Image caption,

Witnesses say the sports car was driving at more than 100mph in the wrong direction

A popular YouTuber known as McSkillet has killed a mother and daughter by driving his car at high speed the wrong way down a California highway.

Trevor Heitmann, best known for playing Counter Strike and designing and selling custom content online, was also killed in the crash near San Diego.

Police say his McLaren sports car collided with a car being driven by a woman with her daughter on Thursday.

They have been named locally as 43-year-old Aileen and Aryana Pizarro, 12.

Heitmann's car was destroyed in the impact, while Aileen Pizarro's SUV burst into flames.

A number of other cars were also involved in the crash, which happened at about 16:30 local time (23:30 GMT).

Witnesses told police the McLaren had been travelling at more than 100 mph (160km/h) at the time, and was driving southbound in a northbound lane on the Interstate-805 freeway.

Heitmann's sports car was also involved in an earlier incident where it drove into the fence of an elementary school but no one was injured.

The son of victim Aileen Pizarro described his mother and sister to CBS News, external as the "kindest, most caring people in the world".

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Heitmann was known online as "the King of Skins" for designing and selling custom content, or skins, for the first-person shooter game Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

He had almost 900,000 subscribers on YouTube and hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter.

Image source, YouTube
Image caption,

A video on his channel showed off the 2014 McLaren 650S in December 2017

Reports say Heitmann was given a trade ban by the game's owner Valve earlier this year over a crackdown on gambling involving custom content, which froze him out of account and cut his income.

He had not uploaded a video to his channel for five months.

Friends of the YouTuber online said on social media that he had been struggling with his mental health before Thursday's accident.

Officials say they are investigating the crash.