More Proof Emerges That Car Flew off California Cliff — but Mystery Remains Unsolved

CHP – San Francisco released dash camera video that Northern California authorities said shows a car veering off Highway 1 in San Mateo County near Gray Whale Cove State Beach and flying off a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. BY CHP- SAN FRANCISCO

Authorities in Northern California said Thursday that more evidence has emerged confirming that a car drove off the highway and over a seaside cliff before vanishing last month. One witness reported the Lexus SUV flying off Highway 1 into the Pacific Ocean near Gray Whale Cove State Beach in San Mateo County on Dec. 30 around 11 a.m.

That witness had dash camera footage capturing the astounding moment the car hurtled over the edge, which he shared with authorities, according to California Highway Patrol.

He was very cooperative,” CHP Officer Bert Diaz said of the witness during a Thursday phone interview with McClatchy News. “He stuck around for about five hours on scene and cooperated with our investigating offers. As you can imagine, he was a little shook from what he saw.”

But that man was the only witness until a second came forward this month, bolstering the story of what happened that day. Other cars are visible in the dash camera video (which police shared on Facebook in early January) and Diaz said a person in one of those cars reported watching the incredible incident unfold.

“They were able to contact us via social media and confirm the incident as well,” Diaz said of the second witness. “Besides the video footage and this second witness, there haven’t been any other witnesses.” Despite CHP’s insistence the video is real, viewers online speculated that the video could be a deepfake — a video engineered to seem incredibly real despite being fictitious.

An expert in deepfake technology agreed with the police assessment of the video’s authenticity, however. “My gut feeling is this video is probably not deepfake,” said Shamir Allibhai, CEO of a Silicon Valley-based media forensics company called Amber, the Mercury News reported this week.

Allibhai suggested rumors about the clip being fake underscored how pernicious deepfakes can be, according to the Mercury News. “Imagine a world where deepfakes are prevalent. That will allow anyone to deny and dispute anything that they don’t like,” Allibhai said, according to the newspaper. “The existence of fake video gives ammunition to anybody to delegitimize genuine evidence.”

Diaz said Thursday that there is no evidence the video was fake. “I’ve heard the deepfake comment,” Diaz said. “We never had indication or any reason to believe the initial witness was not being forthcoming or authentic, or wasn’t providing a legitimate video.”

Diaz added that it’s not shocking so few people witnessed the car going over the cliff. “It’s completely reasonable to think that there’s only two witnesses,” Diaz said. “If you travel down State Route 1 at that time of day, it’s usually a time of day when most people are at work. The towns are pretty spread out through there.”

Diaz said authorities have combed through missing person and vehicle reports looking for clues, with little clear success. But he said CHP’s plea for help from the public yielded new leads.

We got leads from all over the country,” Diaz said. “There are solid leads, but I don’t have any identifiers — we still don’t know who the parties are.” The car hasn’t been found, either.

Car parts have washed up on nearby beaches, though, and authorities are sorting through those as well, Diaz said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any updates to give you that would wrap this all in a bow,” he said. “Until there’s a body or some sort of concrete evidence that, hey, this is the person that was driving this vehicle, we’re not going to be able to identify them.”

Source: The Sacramento Bee