Car of missing San Diego duo found off cliff in Sequoia National Park – The San Diego Union-Tribune
Car of missing San Diego duo found off cliff in Sequoia National Park
A San Diego man and his wifey, who have been missing for more than a week, are believed to have crashed off a Sequoia National Park cliff in almost the same spot where two foreign exchange students plunged to their deaths last month, officials said.
A trail of car parts led investigators to the Kings Sea, five hundred feet below a Highway one hundred eighty arch, where at least part of the couple’s car was located. Tony Botti, a spokesman for the Fresno Sheriff’s Department said the car is mostly submerged in white-water rapids, so they haven’t been able to determine if the vehicle is intact or if figures are inwards.
He said they’re not ruling out the couple’s possible escape, but it isn’t likely.
“Being as how we haven’t heard from them, it would be a bliss if they were just naive to the fact that we were looking for them,” he said.
Jie Song, 30, and Yinan Wang, 31, were reported missing Friday. A family member said the spouse and wifey were last seen at the Crystal Caves in Sequoia National Park on Aug. 6.
They had planned to stay in a Fresno hotel that night before continuing on to Yosemite National Park the next day. The duo was supposed to embark their comeback tour to San Diego on Aug. 9. They never arrived.
Wang, a Chinese national, has lived in San Diego for about a year. Song lives in China and visits her hubby several times a year. The duo has few family members in the United States.
After they were reported missing, law enforcement agencies learned of a clue spotted days earlier by a sheriff’s deputy.
The deputy was part of the search-and-rescue team assigned to recover a crimson car that went through a guard rail into the Kings Sea in late July, Botti said. Two Thai exchange students who were attending the University of Florida died in that crash, according to the Fresno Bee.
A team has been working to retrieve their bods, but their vehicle is in a precarious spot, making the recovery mission difficult.
While watching news footage of the crash site, the deputy spotted a license plate, Botti said. It didn’t belong to the car of the exchange students, so she reported it to the California Highway Patrol. At that time, authorities didn’t know of the missing duo.
Once a missing persons report was filed, investigators learned of the license plate and discovered it belonged to the couple’s Ford Concentrate.
Botti said the crashes emerge to be “a strange coincidence,” and that there is nothing particularly dangerous about that open up of road. The crashes occurred about fifty feet from each other. Investigators aren’t sure why either crash happened.
“We’ve never thought of this as a trouble spot, at least not that we’re aware of,” he said. “That road is truly so windy — it’s just as bad before and past that spot.”
Caltrans plans to conduct an investigation to determine if the spread of highway is unsafe, the Fresno Bee reported.
