Have you ever experienced finding someone you have got to know online has died?

I was just thinking about the friendships we build up on the net and I was reminded of a time when someone with whom I’d had some very good discussions with ( about the American West, Lewis & Clark and all that kind of stuff ), and became good friends with.
We communicated by e-mails maybe several times a week over a period of about 9 months
All of a sudden all the e-mails stopped. 2 weeks after getting no replies another e-mail came in. It was from their e-mail address but was written by someone else to say they had been knocked down and killed in a car accident.
I was pretty shocked at this. There were never anymore replies to the e-mails I sent back.
How would you react/feel in such a situation?
I just felt really weird that here was somebody I’d only ever met online and now they were totally gone.
Its just passed the 10th anniversary of this and it came right back to me.