Guy Kapulnik

On the morning of 24 September 2026, Kapulnik was piloting a single-engine Aeronca Champion when it crashed in open ground near Summit Valley Road and Telephone Canyon Road in Hesperia, San Bernardino County, California, several miles from the local airport. Emergency services were called around 9:53 a.m. Both occupants were pronounced dead at the scene. The San Bernardino County Coroner's Office identified Kapulnik, a 46-year-old Los Angeles resident, as the pilot, and Taylor Laska, 33, of Santa Monica, as the passenger. Midfield Aviation of Apple Valley was associated with the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board opened investigations; early FAA wording described unknown circumstances. Israeli media, citing his family, reported that a funeral would be held in Karmei Yosef.

Guy Kapulnik was born in Israel around 1979 or 1980 (public reports give his age as 46 at death but do not state a full birth date). He grew up on moshav Karmei Yosef. Before acting, he served as an officer in the Israel Air Force's elite Unit 669 search-and-rescue force. He then completed a bachelor's degree in information systems at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Drawn to performance, he enrolled at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio in Jerusalem, one of Israel's leading drama schools, and graduated around 2010, according to contemporary Israeli film listings.

Kapulnik's early screen work was rooted in Israeli film and theatre. He appeared in Sharon Bar-Ziv's military drama Room 514 as Nimrod, in Salsa Tel Aviv as Avi, in Watch Over Me (also released in the Boys On Film anthology) as Eitan, and in Samuel Maoz's Lebanon. Israeli entertainment profiles also credited him as a creator of the theatrical event U R Here, performed at the same time in Tel Aviv and Amsterdam. After moving to the United States he continued acting in film and television, with credits including Hacked and The Call of the Wild, and he took on assistant-director and stunt-related work as well. In parallel he rebuilt his professional life around flying. Based in Los Angeles, he became a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor, completed ATP CTP training, and taught numerous students. Colleagues and pupils remembered an instructor who paired technical skill with contagious enthusiasm for aviation, while he kept pursuing the longer goal of airline flying.

Kapulnik made his home in Los Angeles in his later years while remaining closely tied to Karmei Yosef and to family in Israel. Public tributes after his death emphasized range rather than a single identity: actor and creator, skipper and man of the sea, pilot and teacher. Family statements described curiosity and adventure as constants, and friends recalled someone comfortable moving between a film set, a boat and a cockpit. Detailed information about a spouse or children was not published in the major reports of his death.

Kapulnik left a dual imprint: as an Israeli actor who crossed into American screen work, and as a California flight instructor whose students publicly mourned a mentor as much as a teacher. Family language that circulated after the crash, calling him a man of action who kept choosing new paths between stage, sea and sky, captured how colleagues remembered him. His film roles, especially Room 514 and Lebanon, keep him visible in Israeli cinema of the 2010s, while tributes from the flying community underline a second vocation he pursued with equal seriousness in Los Angeles.