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Mother of Uber Chief Executive Killed in Boating Accident
Mike Isaac and
SAN FRANCISCO — The mother of Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, was killed and his father seriously injured in a boating accident on Friday near Fresno, Calif., the company said on Saturday.
Bonnie Kalanick, 71, who formerly worked in advertising sales at The Los Angeles Daily News, had long had a close relationship with her son Travis, whom she raised with her husband, Donald, in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Donald Kalanick was rushed to a nearby hospital and was listed in serious condition, the company said. By midafternoon Saturday, an Uber spokesman said his condition had stabilized.
“Travis and his family suffered an unspeakable tragedy,” the spokesman, Matt Kallman, said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Travis and his family in this heartbreaking time.”
Travis Kalanick did not issue his own statement.
The Fresno County Sheriff’s coroner’s office said in a statement on Friday that it had received a call shortly before 5 p.m. reporting a boating accident at Pine Flat Lake.
Deputies with the sheriff’s office responded to the scene and found a man and a woman on the shore. He had moderate injuries; she was dead, the statement said, without immediately identifying the victims other than to say they were a local married couple. An initial report indicated that the boat had struck a rock and later sank, the statement said.
Bonnie and Donald Kalanick played an immense role in the development and rearing of their son Travis, friends and colleagues have said. The couple consistently supported him as he became involved in multiple tech start-ups. At one point, as a start-up struggled, Mr. Kalanick was forced to move in with his parents, who welcomed him, he has said.
Mr. Kalanick has built the ride-hailing company Uber into a nearly $70 billion juggernaut, operating in hundreds of cities across dozens of countries around the world.
Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Benjamin Weiser from New York.
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