The pilot of the single-engine aircraft that crashed near Hesperia about two-and-a-half miles from Hesperia Airport on September 24 was actor Guy Kapulnik, the Sentinel has learned.
Killed with Kalupnik, 46, was Taylor Laska, 33.
The plane went down at around 10 a.m. that day, a Thursday, nosediving into the desert floor south of Summit Valley Drive, east of Maple Avenue, near Telephone Canyon Road.
When San Bernardino County first responders, consisting of both sheriff’s patrol units and county fire agency companies, both Kalupnik and Laska were dead inside the aircraft, killed apparently, upon impact.
The accident scene was preserved undisturbed to give Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board investigators, who arrived that afternoon, an opportunity to comb through the wreckage in an effort to ascertain the cause of the crash.
Witnesses saw the single-engine plane spiraling out of the sky in the seconds before the crash.
The was a 1946 single-engine, two-seat Aeronca 7AC Champion owned by Midfield Aviation of Apple Valley.
Kapulnik has been active in cinema and film at least since 2007. He starred in Room 514, filmed in Israel in 2012 and directed by Sharon Bar‑Ziv. His breakthrough role was in the 2009 Israeli war drama Lebanon, directed by Samuel Maoz.
More recently, he had an uncredited part as a Royal Canadian Mountie in 2020’s The Call of the Wild, a Hollywood adaptation of Jack London’s novel.
He also played Short Sam in Hacked, a 2020 American crime drama. He played Eitan in the 2011 short film Watch Over Me and Avi in the 2010 short film Salsa Tel Aviv. Some of his other credits were in the short films The Usual (2020), The Collar (2019), Silent Love Stories: Heart Beat (2018). He also directed and did stunt work. His directorial work included 2020’s Mama Knows.
Kapulnik had been a student at the Technion in Haifa and the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio in Jerusalem.
An Israeli citizen, Kapulnik had been living in Los Angeles for some time.
In his late teens Kapulnik participated in Israel’s compulsory military service and volunteered for extended services and more intensive assignments into his late twenties as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces’ 669 search and rescue unit.
In recent years he was working less in Hollywood and was primarily a flight instructor.
He is survived by his wife and three children. His body was taken to Israel, where his funeral was held in Karmei Yosef on September 30.
Laska, of Santa Monica, was a brand builder and marketeer of cosmetic and health products, having previously been employed with Ilia Beauty and Kypris. In September, she was the head of marketing with the wellness brand The Good Patch.