FIELDS, Ore. – Professional racer and television personality Jessi Combs died in an attempt to break a land-speed record.
On Tuesday afternoon, Jessi Combs crashed a jet-powered car while speeding across the Alvord Desert, a dry lakebed in southeastern Oregon.
The Harney County Sheriff’s Office said Combs, a Long Beach resident, was pronounced dead when deputies arrived at the scene of the crash. She was the sole fatality.
NBC News reports Combs was a former host on the popular TV series “Mythbusters” and made appearances on numerous other shows.
Former Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage wrote the following on Twitter after learning about Combs’ death:
I’m so so sad, Jessi Combs has been killed in a crash. She was a brilliant & too-notch builder, engineer, driver, fabricator, and science communicator, & strove everyday to encourage others by her prodigious example. She was also a colleague, and we are lesser for her absence.
— Adam Savage (@donttrythis) August 28, 2019
Combs was 39 years old.
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