Josh Neuman, an American skateboarder and social media celebrity, was one of four men died after a tourist plane crashed into a lake in Iceland on Monday, according to Icelandic officials.
Neuman, 22, was on the flight alongside Tim Alings, the company’s sponsorship manager, 27, and Nicola Bellavia, a 32-year-old Belgian skydiver and social media personality, to generate commercial material for the Belgian fashion brand Suspicious Antwerp.
Haraldur Diego, 49, was a pioneer of photographic tours as well as one of Iceland’s most notable aviators.
With the help of an autonomous submarine and sonar technology, four remains thought to be the men were recovered on Sunday in Lake Thingvallavatn, Iceland’s second-largest lake.
Divers have been unable to retrieve the dead, which were discovered at depths of up to 157 feet, due to bad weather (48 meters).
“We have to wait till the weather improves for the safety of the divers,” police chief Oddur Arnason told The Associated Press.
After disappearing from radar on Thursday, the Cessna 172 plane did not issue a distress signal. The aeroplane was discovered Saturday in a section of the lake approximately 30 miles (50 kilometres) east of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, by more than 1,000 members of Iceland’s Search and Rescue group.
Neuman was most known for making one of the most popular skateboarding videos on YouTube, with nearly 1.2 million subscribers to his channel.
Neuman began creating videos with his father’s video camera when he was 12 years old, according to his webpage, and later dropped out of college to pursue a career in extreme sports and filmmaking.
In 2020, he released a sponsored video for Suspicious Antwerp in which he skated down a winding road in Los Angeles on a longboard.
The goal of the aircraft, according to suspicious Antwerp spokesman Bram Boriau, was to shoot footage of Iceland’s breathtaking surroundings.
By email, he informed the Associated Press that “all folks present were extremely passionate about travel and content creation, hence these themes were the main focus of the trip.”
