Deadly California cliff car wreck possibly intentional - police

By Rich McKay

 

Police say the SUV that plunged off a Northern California cliff into the Pacific Ocean last week, killing a family of eight, may have been driven off the coastal highway intentionally. 

 

(Reuters) - A sports utility vehicle carrying a large, multiracial family from Washington state drove straight off a scenic cliff on the California coast last week, killing at least six people in what appears to have been an intentional crash, police said.

 

The wrecked GMC Yukon was discovered last Monday, only three days after child welfare authorities in Washington state opened an investigation into allegations the children were being neglected, social and health authorities said.

 

According to court records, the family had troubles in the past when one of the mothers was charged with domestic assault against a daughter.

 

The family gained attention after one of the children, Devonte, was photographed crying in the arms of a white police officer at a 2014 protest just months after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

 

The family's SUV appears to have been stopped by the side of the road in Mendocino County, about 180 miles (290 kms) north of San Francisco, before accelerating to as fast as 90 mph (145 kph) and hurtling off a cliff, acting Assistant CHP Chief Greg Baarts told reporters on Sunday.

 

Data from the SUV's software, along with the absence of skid marks, suggested the event was not an accident, Baarts said.

He said that it was "pure acceleration all the way."

 

The SUV fell into rocks and water about 100 feet (30 meters) below the highway.

 

Driver Jennifer Hart, 38, and Sarah Hart, 38, a white married couple from Washington State, were killed. So were at least three of their six adopted children, Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14 and Abigail, 14, police said.

 

The bodies of their three other children, Hannah 16, Devonte 15 and Sierra 12, were not recovered as of early Monday, but officials believed all the children, who were black, were in the vehicle along with their parents.

 

Police said they searched the family's home in Woodland, Washington, about 500 miles north of the crash site, but found no suicide note.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services said it opened an investigation into the family for potential child neglect or abuse after a complaint on March 23.

 

Neighbours Dana and Bruce DeKalb told the Oregonian newspaper that Devonte had asked them for food for himself and his siblings after his parents withheld it as punishment. The DeKalbs did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Sarah Hart was convicted of misdemeanour domestic assault of Abigail in 2011 in Minnesota. Court documents show the child told a teacher, "Mom hit me."

 

(Reporting by Rich McKay, additional reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Eric Meijer and Grant McCool)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-04-03

Best to tiptoe through this little minefield. Family seems to have moved around, though I would move from a state where you are charged with domestic assault for hitting a 7yo in your care.

Of course it was intentional. Wouldn't be surprised if "Thelma and Louise" or "Harold and Maude" was shown on American TV recently. People copy stuff.

A white lesbian "married" couple adopt six black children. Issues around potential child neglect and abuse.

 

And no one saw this coming!

 

What a world we've created.

16 hours ago, hyku1147 said:

They flourished under the PC umbrella. If a traditional family had committed said abuses  - they would have been severely punished  by the courts.

 

A nice, "traditional", white, middle class, male and female.......like this two? :

 

 

Serial, long term, "flourishing" abusers of their children.

 

Maybe you forgot?:

 

A look at the lives of 13 siblings held captive in a ... - Washington Post

 

 

Edited April 3, 20188 yr by Enoon

18 hours ago, halloween said:

Best to tiptoe through this little minefield. Family seems to have moved around, though I would move from a state where you are charged with domestic assault for hitting a 7yo in your care.

Family?  Ya kidding. Two pervs beating and starving their child victims due to PV blinkers. Same sex couples can never be appropriate parents. It's nonsense 

Narcissists.  They kept adopting children?  Presumably legally, and maybe at one point with good intentions. But the accounts from the neighbors about abuse and fright expressed by at least one of the kids, hints at other things.  Power, control, etc

Some people are biologically not meant to have children - that is, they biologically have low maternal/paternal instinct. Such people are ear-marked by evolution for other tasks. Fine.

However, society (including religion, and Disney) has screwed it all up by dictating that the family is the normative, correct, and wholesome goal of every individual. Some people get twisted into the wrong shape by social pressure.

It never ceases to astonish me how far society fails to understand itself.

21 hours ago, hyku1147 said:

What do the psychologists and balanced sociologists  have to say?

PC nonsense, mainly - or at least, that's the perspective that the media promotes.

Evolutionary psychologists will agree with me. For some people, parenthood is not in their genes. Not to say that it should be denied anyone, only that society should be careful what it promotes.