Anton Yelchin’s parents suing Fiat Chrysler
By Buckie Wells
The actor’s parents seek justice after the Star Trek star was killed by a Jeep malfunction.
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Just a few weeks before the premiere of Star Trek Beyond, the film’s cast and crew were struck with the devastating news that one of their own had passed. Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the reboot series, was killed at his home in Studio City, California when his Jeep Cherokee pinned him against a brick pillar.
Since his death, investigators have looked into what caused the Jeep to begin rolling and have concluded that there was a problem with the gears that would cause the car to slip out of ‘park.’
It was also revealed that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), the company that owns several well-known car brands, such as Jeep and Dodge, issued a recall notice on Yelchin’s specific car model, but the notice wasn’t sent to Yelchin until seven days after his death.
In the wake of his death and to avoid this happening to anyone else in the future, Yelchin’s parents, Victor and Irina, have filed a class-action lawsuit that questions whether FCA knew about the faulty gear shift and whether they did enough to correct the problem.
At the press conference held today, Victor Yelchin told reporters, “With unbelievable grief, we decided to come here to prevent other families with the same tragedy. Anton was our only son — a remarkable human being. It’s against nature when a parent has to bury their own child.“
The court documents specifically call out FCA for knowing about the malfunction in several of their cars and the lack of “tactile or position feedback as to whether the car has been actually placed into the safe-to-exit ‘park’ gear.”
And to add insult to injury, Mr. and Mrs. Yelchin’s attorney has also stated that they “received no condolences from the car manufacturer in the wake of their son’s death.”
Along with Star Trek Beyond, Yelchin has four other movies which will be released posthumously.
We’ll continue to update as more information on this unfortunate story is released.
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