8 days after car plunged off cliff, ‘nothing’s changed’ in search

Neither SUV nor its occupants have been found after crash along Highway 1

It has been more than a week since an SUV drove off a cliff along Highway 1 near Gray Whale Cove State Beach in San Mateo County, plunging into the choppy water below.

But despite the efforts of sheriff’s deputies, divers and even a Navy SEAL sonar system, no confirmed traces of the car or whoever was inside have shown up — save a few car parts found in the water and an old shoe strewn on the beach.

“Nothing’s changed,” said Officer Bert Diaz of the California Highway Patrol on Tuesday. “We have been getting leads from the public, and we’re looking at them and exploring them, but as of now I don’t have an update on a person or a vehicle.”

Around 11 a.m. Dec. 30, a dark-green SUV was captured in a dashcam video traveling along the shoulder of Highway 1, a winding, historic road that fronts the coast all the way from San Francisco to Southern California.

Rather than turning — or even slowing down — the SUV appears to drive off the cliff and directly into the water, briefly catching air before vanishing from the frame.

In the eight days since, a rotating cast of California Highway Patrol, Coast Guard, fire officials and sheriff’s deputies have pounded the sand and the waves for clues. But a dive search that began Dec. 31st had to be called off that same day as a high-surf advisory went into effect — and has not been able to resume since.

On Saturday, Navy SEALs used a sonar system underwater to try to detect debris underwater. That, too, proved fruitless, said Detective Rosemerry Blankswade of the Sheriff’s Office, because the waves were too big to get a steady picture below them.

“Deputies are out there every day looking for any other type of evidence or signs or clues to help figure out what’s going on,” Blankswade said.

Yet even after fielding around 50 tips from the public about possible missing persons and car parts washing up along the West Coast, CHP has yet to identify how many people could have been in the car or whom the car may have belonged to.

The main challenge — aside from waiting out the massive waves that have prevented the state Office of Emergency Services from approving a dive search — is the lack of information surrounding what may have happened, Diaz said.

Ideally, the tides will calm and shift sometime in the next week to allow the car and its occupants to wash up on shore. But it’s hard to predict when and where that could occur — and even then, parts would have to be matched to a missing vehicle, which has proved difficult so far.

For now, CHP and sheriff’s deputies await the signal to resume the search and sniff out the leads pouring in from up and down the coast.

But they’re left wondering as much as the public about the circumstances leading up to the car’s dramatic descent.

“It’s bizarre,” Diaz said. “And it’s not normal that somebody catches this on video, so that makes it even stranger.”

Anyone with information for CHP investigators can contact 415-407-3741.