News reporter Michael Hastings, 33, was known for his investigative reports, and his interest in particular stories has the Internet buzzing with conspiracy theories over his death.
Social media users have been commenting that the timing of Hastings death while in the middle of covering topics like monitoring by the National Security Agency and the CIA is terribly suspicious. Hastings' final story published on BuzzFeed was titled "Why Democrats love to spy on Americans."
International Business Times noted "some of the details surrounding the story [of Hastings' death] read like a poorly-written political thriller."
"For instance, Hastings' body has not officially been identified by the coroner's office because it had been so badly burned after it crashed on Hollywood's Highland Ave. at about 4:15am Tuesday," New York Daily News reported.
Hastings died in a car accident in Hollywood, Calif., on Tuesday, and reportedly conspiracy theorists are saying the journalist's death could be a government hit.
According to the Daily News, a commentator posted on a local news site that "Hastings' wreck might make sense on the freeway, but I doubt he'd be dumb enough to go 100 mph on Highland. He's not some dumb college kid."
BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, said Hastings was best known as a reporter who "was really only interested in writing stories someone didn't want him to write - often his subjects."
"He knew that there are certain truths that nobody has an interest in speaking, ones that will make you both your subjects and their enemies uncomfortable," Smith wrote. "They're stories that don't get told because nobody in power has much of an interest in telling them."
Hastings wrote a book called "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," and the upon release he reportedly received a death threat from a former McChrystal staff member.
"We'll hunt you down and kill you if we don't like what you write," the staffer threatened, Hastings told IBT.
"Well, I get death threats like that about once a year, so no worries," Hastings responded, according to IBT. "I wasn't disturbed by the claim. Whenever I'd been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people, one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me."
A makeshift memorial was made at the Los Angeles crash site where many flowers and condolence notes are placed to pay respects to Hastings' death.
