Two months after the fatal car crash that apparently took the life of journalist Michael Hastings, the autopsy report has finally been released. In the report, the toxicology screen revealed that Hastings had trace amounts of marijuana and an amphetamine in his system which were both ingested several hours before the crash and were not contributing factors to the so-called accident. Predictably, the Mainstream Media (MSM) pounced on these trace amounts in their headlines essentially to make Hastings a meth head in the eyes of the public and tamp down the many inconsistencies in the official story. Indeed, the release of the autopsy report, coupled with previously released witnesses accounts and videos, makes these many inconsistencies even more glaring and the obvious "blame the victim" meme even more disturbing. The autopsy report mentions the discovery of two empty alcoholic bottles "near" the crash site not once, but twice, even though the report states there was no alcohol in his blood.
The coroner is making his conclusions based on the theory that the decedent was involved in a high speed crash with a "fixed object" (the palm tree). The coroner states that all burns to the body were postmortem, all on the left side, with extensive charring of the head and upper left chest and back and that all fractures on the left side were thermal fractures, also postmortem. This means he was dead before the fire consumed the passenger compartment; with the coroner establishing near instantaneous death due to "massive blunt force trauma" consistent with the sudden deceleration caused by a car hitting a fixed object at high speed.
I stated that the coroner's conclusions were based on a theory because of a restaurant surveillance video that was finally released more than four weeks after the crash. It shows the car was traveling at a speed of about 35 mph and that there are two distinct explosions before the car comes to a stop, when a third and largest explosion takes place. The distance between the restaurant camera and the point of the car stopping is about 200 feet. The time between the car next to the camera and the point of the car stopping is 4 seconds. This results in a speed of about 35 mph. The posted speed on Highland is 35 mph.