Authorities are continuing to search for two people believed to have been in a car that swerved off the side of a mountain road in Ventura County and rolled 1,000 feet down a cliff at 2 a.m. Sunday.
A white Cadillac Escalade crashed just northwest of Malibu on Deer Creek Road about two miles from where the road meets the Pacific Coast Highway, according to Officer Ryan Ayala, a California Highway Patrol spokesperson. A day and a half after the collision, one of the passengers reported two other occupants as missing, he said.
A search of the vehicle and the surrounding area on Monday and Tuesday yielded no results, and nobody has checked themselves in to any area hospitals for injuries consistent with the vehicle crash, Ayala said. The CHP was also unable to locate either missing occupant at the addresses provided by the reporting party, he said.
“It’s a really, really weird situation,” he said. “At this point, we need to verify that the other two people in the vehicle are safe.”
The reporting passenger told authorities he was able to self-extricate from the crash and hike to a nearby road where he was picked up, according a CHP news release. He had been sitting in the front passenger seat and had some injuries to his right arm and abrasions from his seat belt, said Ayala, who added that it’s unclear why he waited almost two days to report the missing occupants.
The Ventura County Fire Department assisted in the on-the-ground search and said in a statement Monday evening that one of the passengers had been located safe at home.
Ayala said that this was inaccurate information and that the CHP, which is leading the investigation, had been unable to confirm either of the two missing occupants as safe as of Wednesday afternoon.
When asked about the statement, the Fire Department referred questions to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The search took place with assistance from the county Fire Department, the Sheriff’s Office, Ventura County Search and Rescue and the Oxnard Fire Department, according to the CHP. The search included drones, helicopters, police dogs and search and rescue crews on foot, Ayala said.
“We used every resource available to us at the time,” he said.
The ground search has now concluded and the CHP is continuing its investigation with the assistance of a law enforcement agency in Washington state, where the car is registered, Ayala said.
Based on preliminary evidence, it appears that the crash took place after the driver failed to turn at a bend in the road and missed the guardrail, causing the car to roll multiple times down the mountain before coming to rest on its roof, he said.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact CHP investigating Officer Tucker at 805-662-2640.
