The California Highway Patrol (CHP) said in a statement on Tuesday that Dharmesh Arvind Patel, 40, of Pasadena, has been arrested and will be booked into San Mateo County prison after leaving the hospital.
New York: After deliberately driving his wife and two children inside a vehicle down a 250-foot California cliff, an Indian-American father was charged with attempted murder and child abuse.
The California Highway Patrol (CHP) said in a statement on Tuesday that Dharmesh Arvind Patel, 40, of Pasadena, has been arrested and will be booked into San Mateo County prison after leaving the hospital.
The vehicle crashed into the water when it was moving south on State Route 1 at Devil’s Slide, south of the Tom Lantos Tunnels.
It turned over and came to rest on its wheels, according to NBC News.
In a statement, the CHP stated that at around 10.50 on Monday morning, it received a report of “a car over the edge of the cliff on State Route 1.”
According to the press release, when the CHP and other responding authorities arrived on the site, they discovered a white Tesla that had gone 250–300 feet down the cliff.
Two adults and two children, ages seven and four, were found inside the car by the authorities and sent “to a nearby hospital with significant injuries.”
The children’s car seats may have saved their lives, according to Brian Pottenger, incident commander for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who told NBC News that it was “acevery, very unusual” for someone to survive such a high fall.
According to the data gathered, the CHP stated that there was “probable reason” to suspect that the occurrence was an intentional one.
Authorities want to charge Patel with two charges of child abuse and three counts of attempted murder, according to NBC.
The Tesla’s self-drive capability was not a contributing cause in the incident, the CHP continued, at least not at this point.
