Billionaire, aged 70, dies in a motorsport crash

Crown died on Sunday, on his birthday, when he crashed into a barrier at the Aspen Motorsports Park.

“The official cause of death is pending autopsy although multiple blunt force trauma is evident,” the coroner’s office said in a news release. “The manner is accident.”

James Crown, Chicago billionaire, dead in Colorado race track accident, had announced plans to enlist CEOs to fight violent crime in Chicago - Chicago Sun-Times https://t.co/MYQUXqhK5X

— Lara Logan (@laralogan) June 27, 2023

He was a board member at JPMorgan Chase, chairman and CEO of his family business, and managing partner of Aspen Skiing Co.

Forbes estimated the Crown family’s wealth at $10.2 billion in 2020.

President Obama appointed Crown to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in 2014.

President Biden called Crown “a good man, a dear friend, and a great American.”

Biden added: “Jim lived a great Chicago story – one that tied our nation’s industrious past to an ever-hopeful future. He grew up the great-grandson of a sweatshop worker whose son turned a construction-supply company into an empire. 

“Throughout his own career as a business and civic leader, Jim continued to drive that legacy forward, bring out the best in his peers, and help shape the city he loved.”