Oculus Rift co-founder killed by gang trying to escape police

I feel badly for his family and coworkers. :(<p>Make sure you let your family know how much you care about them. Also make sure they will be taken care of in case you're suddenly gone. Firstly by picking up enough term life insurance to cover your dependents' needs until adulthood. Secondly by writing up a will and giving it to someone you trust. [1][2]<p>We joke about "getting hit by a bus" and a project's "bus factor"[3] but it really does happen. It could happen to you or to a critically important person on your project team. Make it a policy to have all critical info recorded in some systematic way. You don't have to get all iso9000 but you should, at the very least, have everyone do a brain dump into a wiki once a month and keep it in a central location (along with the password file, list of client info, etc.)<p>-<p>[1] DIY will: <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Your-Own-Last-Will-and-Testament" rel="nofollow">http://www.wikihow.com/Write-Your-Own-Last-Will-and-Testamen...</a><p>[2] Reasonably priced template: <a href="http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-wills/wills-overview.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-wills/wills-overview.html</a><p>[3] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor</a>

This is a good reminder to always be a defensive and aware pedestrian. Just because you have the light or the right-of-way doesn't mean you are guaranteed a safe crossing of the street. Whenever I cross an intersection as a pedestrian I always look both ways (even on one way streets) and I always keep an eye on cars that are still in motion, especially those that don't appear to be slowing down. It's good to make these sorts of things just an innate habit, it could safe your life one day.

After watching police chases on TV my whole life, I really want to know:<p>What's the logical strategy in a police chase? Just keep driving after each other? It risks the lives of hundreds living and walking in the path of the chase all for the sake of punishing 1 or 2 individuals. It just doesn't seem to add up to me.<p>What a shame we lost someone so brilliant for nothing.

It is always sad to lose someone in your community. The Oculus Rift seems like a pretty cool invention and hope things turn out well.<p>What do you even say when stuff like this happens? He was a developer and in a way we never know when each of us will meet our ends.

It's a sad day. His many contributions to the open source and the gaming communities will live on, like his work on VBjin-OVR, a Virtual Boy Emulator.<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/vbjin-ovr/source/browse/oculus/CommonSrc/Render/Render_Font.h?spec=svn1ee8be125188906dcab23a818641453bc4e52b4e&#38;r=1ee8be125188906dcab23a818641453bc4e52b4e" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/vbjin-ovr/source/browse/oculus/Comm...</a>

Last night, I was walking to the store (the Walgreens next to the Berkeley Bowl, for you Bay Areans) and a drunk driver shot up onto the pavement about twenty feet in front of me. It was mere coincidence that my partner and I avoided the hospital or worse. This is a sobering thing to read the morning after that.<p>Seriously: there was nothing I could have done to avoid that. By the time I was reacting, the car was already on the sidewalk. It was luck. Yeah, be careful out there, sure. Can we have self-driving cars REALLY SOON PLEASE? I hear rumors that they work, and don't drink on the job.

Was it responsible for the police to chase them at this time?<p><i>two vehicles full of people involved in some type of criminal activity</i><p>Was this yet another incident where the police self-escalated the situation?<p>I sure hope there was a precise reason this happened and not that "they smelled pot".

I just wanted to say two things here. One, this is an incredibly damaging tragedy. I truly wish the best for the community, for the Reisse and Oculus VR family.<p>Secondly, my father has been an officer of the law for more than 25 years -- can we please not turn a thread which is being used to inform the community at large of a tragedy as a way to defame those who wish to do good in their community.<p>I ask out of respect of Reisse, and my good natured father that we keep at the very least this thread on topic.

I've not been following the Oculus Rift very much, other than waiting for its release and keeping an eye on which games might support it once it's released. So I don't really know much of the history or the company.<p>Can someone share how Reisse was involved w/ the Oculus Rift? Looking at the company's profile[1], it makes no mention of Reisse, and lists Luckey as the "Founder".<p>Even searching their site[2] makes no mention of Reisse, other than a recent discussion[3] about his untimely death. And those discussions seem to only refer to him as an "employee".<p>Is calling him "co-founder" in the title truly accurate?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.oculusvr.com/company/" rel="nofollow">http://www.oculusvr.com/company/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=reisse+site%3Aoculusvr.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=reisse+site%3Aoculusvr.com</a><p>[3] <a href="https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&#38;t=1362" rel="nofollow">https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&#38...</a>

I was about to lament how reckless the police were to be in a high-speed pursuit, but it's hard to fault them when this began with a fatal shooting of an officer at the beginning of the encounter.<p>Just a really sad turn of events.

People are missing the main point here. This was a terrible, but not a senseless, tragedy, and there is an important lesson to learn.<p>It's not "be more careful when crossing the street". Being a super-defensive pedestrian might have saved Andrew Reisse, but that's not the main point. It's not "don't have high speed chases". Perhaps different police policies might have averted this tragedy, but that's not the main point, either.<p>The main point is that roving paramilitary gangs rule large swathes of Santa Ana, California, and virtually every other big city in America. These gangs have not been broken because the police lack the mandate to break them. (My father consulted for the Santa Ana police department for nearly 30 years; they feel powerless against the gangs.) The gangs probably wouldn't last a week against a vigorous application of military-grade force, but such an application of force is politically untenable at present. This means that <i>the current political system itself is complicit</i>.<p>Don't blame the pedestrian or the police. Blame the gangs and the system that protects them.

Saddening news aside, this is terrible reporting. Reisse was killed in a car accident caused by gang members who were fleeing from the police.

This is extremely sad, but it made me think of an important topic: contingency planning.<p>Pretty much every organization I've worked for was missing a "key developer got hit by bus" plan for at least one major project.

This reminds me of something my dad, a minister of religion, used to repeat constantly "No-one is promised tomorrow". I'm pretty sure he was trying to impress on a given audience "Repent now, you may not get another chance".<p>I tend to approach it from a different angle. Be brilliant and live your life now, you may not get the chance to do so later. It sounds like he was doing awesome things, so one can only hope that his work lives on.<p>My condolences to Andrew's family.

Terribly sad news, at least he got to experience the VR dream in his lifetime and see that Oculus is destined for the history books.

This is truly upsetting. We just lost a brilliant mind and creative genius. RIP, Andrew Scott Reisse.

Damn, news like that surely make you note the fragility of our lives. Too bad. Condolences to the family. Keep yourself safe fellow hackers.

My prayers go out to the family and his colleagues. I was just watching the Kickstarter video about Oculus yesterday.

The HN headline's grammar is ambiguous and could be improved. It could be read to mean "The co-founder was killed by a gang while he (the cofounder) was trying to escape police," or it could mean "The co-founder was killed by a gang while they (the gang) were trying to escape police." (According to the article, the latter meaning is intended.)<p>The HN headline is still many times more informative than the linked article's headline, "Santa Ana police chase: Pedestrian identified." Even considering the newspaper's audience (who, unlike HN, might not know or care enough about Oculus Rift to merit its mention by name in the headline), the fact that the pedestrian was killed by a gang while the gang was trying to escape police would presumably still be of interest.

My co-worker and I were talking about the Oculus Rift only a few days ago. We finally got our hands on the Leap motion device and were thinking up wondrous mashups with the Oculus Rift. What a terrible tragedy. Such a pity he can't be there to witness the Rift's success.

This is sad. Condolences to the friends and family. I do hope that this won't kill the momentum behind the Oculus Rift - seems like amazing piece of tech and will be sad to be lost because of that.

It's so easy to focus on the bad in a situation like this but I wonder how many successful police pursuits that resulted in lives being saved. It reminds me of airbags, if they save 99% of lives but end up causing 1% of deaths then it is seen as a bad thing, but in reality it is really saving lives. It's just a terrible situation that's hard to understand, there is no black in white right answer.

Seriously? :( this sucks.

Wow this is just a couple of miles from our office. This is definitely shocking, and scary at the same time.

You can be a defensive pedestrian, but that's not always going to work. Something like this, a police chase, it defies predictability. It could happen so fast that it doesn't matter if you're completely present and aware, you could still get hit.

This is really sad and a great loss to the community over in Santa Monica. With this sort of thing happening so infrequently in tech, it makes events like these all the more of a loss, for our entire industry.<p>Condolences to the family and Oculus team.

This is horrible. The Oculus is just gearing up to be something great.<p>It is kind of morbid, but This is going to turn into an interesting case study on how a company stays afloat when a major influence is removed from the picture.<p>RIP Andrew Reisse

It's always sad when someone brilliant loses life at such a young age. It's even worse that it was at the hands of a piece of shit criminal trying to save his own skin and is still alive.<p>Very sad. Rest in peace.

Just terrible :( Why does it always seem like the worst and most insignificant wastes of human beings always take away great ones?

RIP Andrew Scott Reisse, you wont be forgotten.

Horrible news. He seemed like a brilliant guy,

a guy dies, and the number one comment is a guy spouting off a public PSA about pedestrian safety?

Rest in peace Andrew Scott Reisse. Cliché but true, nobody is ever promised tomorrow.

Too sad. What a loss. Condolences for the poor family. We never know the day or the hour when death will come, which is something to be mindful of. I have found this an interesting site to reflect on our eternal destiny: <a href="http://needgod.com/" rel="nofollow">http://needgod.com/</a>

So depressing...a grim reminder that some things are simply out of our control

Saddened. RIP, sir.

legalize the drugs and the gangs will die.

And they even let the driver recover in a hospital, at tax payers expense.<p>And of course no mention of the officers name.

This is just awful

F<i></i>* this.

W T F :(

so sad!

.

I believe if I remember correctly, LAPD had a stand down on high speed chases years ago due to the property damage and personal injuries of innocent bystanders.<p>The police have a job to do, but in some areas, the level of aggression with which they pursue their duties is beyond reasonable and seems like adrenaline addiction.

my heart goes out to his family and friends.

That's what happens when a government gives rights to it's citizens to own guns!