CA CA - Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, & Sierra Hart, 12, Mendocino County, 26 March 2018 #1

[LonelyChild]

Lonelychild, If you've ever seen roll over crashes in slow motion, usually all passengers without seatbelts go flying out
of vehicle. I'm not surprised they were found outside. Unlocked doors tend to fly open on rollover.
this accident must have happened Sat. morning early- 12 hrs. from home- they weren't found til Mon. afternoon, so
even if the 2 adults had survived the crash, they succumbed, IMO, from delayed treatment. The children likely died on impact.

Yea I understand that it's possible that they were ejected after the SUV fell. I don't think it was an accident tho. I'm not sure if the police did it or not but o noticed car marks in the sand above the scene. Ita just tragic no matter if it was accident or not.

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[Starkville]

Thanks for posting that useful drone photo! I hadn’t seen it yet.

It really shows what a big distance the drop off is from the roadway. That’s a long way to travel off the road. If it were dark when they were driving, maybe it might seem like another road? Although tires make a different sound when traveling on dirt/gravel than they do on a paved surface. Wouldn’t they have known something was amiss?

It it also shows that it’s a miracle the car was discovered. There’s not a good vantage point to see it if you’re just driving on the road (IMO). I’d love to know more about the person who looked down and saw the upside-down vehicle!

 

[LonelyChild]

Thanks for posting that useful drone photo! I hadn’t seen it yet.

It really shows what a big distance the drop off is from the roadway. That’s a long way to travel off the road. If it were dark when they were driving, maybe it might seem like another road? Although tires make a different sound when traveling on dirt/gravel than they do on a paved surface. Wouldn’t they have known something was amiss?

It it also shows that it’s a miracle the car was discovered. There’s not a good vantage point to see it if you’re just driving on the road (IMO). I’d love to know more about the person who looked down and saw the upside-down vehicle!

Is it possible the person could just have been looking at the view and seen it? Did the person maybe witness the car go over the Cliff?

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[KaaBoom]

Math and physics challenge for any interested.

Something is bothering me about the report that the speedometer was pegged at 90 mph. The physics of the SUV's final resting position are puzzling, when I think about weight, drop, and speed.

I'm going to work on the math a bit more, but wanted to post here to see if others might crowd source the physics problem solving. Clearly we know where the car ended up-- but the 90 mph info released last night doesn't seem to fit that scenario at first glance.

One part of the puzzle I don't know offhand-- is the trajectory from the highway perfectly in line with where the SUV went over the cliff? Or is it perpendicular to some degree to the usual line of travel southbound on that highway?

SUV average weight = 5400 lbs

5 people inside/ average weight 170 lbs X 5 = 850 lbs

Total weight of vehicle and 5 occupants = approx 6250 lbs

100 foot cliff vertical

Turnout is about 75 feet from road to end of tire tracks per police reports

Questions:

1. Is it even possible for an SUV to get up to 90 mph inside of 100 feet unless it was travelling on the road at 90 mph? Seems not. It was an older vehicle, and heavy with people.

2.It seems logical that the SUV should have followed an "arc" more at that weight, speed, and drop, and landed in the water-- not upside down on the rocks, very close to the cliff face. The resting place seems like it fell and rolled at least once. But the engine compartment is very heavy, and the weight is unevenly distributed, so perhaps it tumbled right away?

Appreciate anyone else's input. I'm going to model this a bit more as I think on it. (Maybe Cynic will drop by?!)

I have a hard time buying the 90 mph speed. Maybe that was the speed the wheels were turning while the car was falling. Once the car would be off the ground there would be no friction on the tires, so they would start to spin faster. Also to go off the cliff at 90 mph the car would have had to first make a 90 degree turn off the highway. You can not make a 90 degree turn at 90 mph. It's impossible. The fastest speed professional race car drivers can do it is about 70 to 80 mph, and they leave a lot of tire marks doing it. These women were no race car drivers. No way could they have been going more then 40 or 50 mph on the gravel. IMHO.

As for the arc. Keep in mind that the cliff is not completely vertical. Below is what the arc could have looked like. But honestly whatever speed the car was going, I think it probably hit the cliff a few times on the way down and bounced. That SUV is heavy. It can't go very far in the air.

 

[enelram]

Thanks for posting that useful drone photo! I hadn’t seen it yet.

It really shows what a big distance the drop off is from the roadway. That’s a long way to travel off the road. If it were dark when they were driving, maybe it might seem like another road? Although tires make a different sound when traveling on dirt/gravel than they do on a paved surface. Wouldn’t they have known something was amiss?

It it also shows that it’s a miracle the car was discovered. There’s not a good vantage point to see it if you’re just driving on the road (IMO). I’d love to know more about the person who looked down and saw the upside-down vehicle!

Some neighbors of that cliff said people stop there to walk their dogs so maybe that's who found the car.

 

[Zelda1010]

It seems like the three smallest family members are missing. Could that be part of the physics of being ejected from a rollover crash? We're they flung faster or further into the ocean currents?

I found this study, Factors Affecting Ejection Risk in Rollover Crashes, interesting. I've been picturing these young people trying to escape their fate, possibly, as an explanation for no seatbelt & ejection. But it seems those mental gymnastics are unnecessary. The study touches briefly on body mass inconclusively being a possible factor.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3503426/

 

[UltraViolet4545]

I wonder if the adults were stressed out and arguing/fighting? Maybe the driver picked up speed as they fought, and was sort of lashing out by driving recklessly to scare her wife? I suppose she could have totally lost her cool and just cranked the wheel over the cliff in a sudden angry impulsive decision? It seems the driver was the one with impulse control issues in the past.

 

[enelram]

OK all you math whiz's, here's the formula to calculate some things- distance over cliff, speed, etc.

I have to go feed some hungry horses but when I come back in I hope some of you have this all figured out. Have at it.

https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-f...iff-at-a-certain-speed-and-its-path-of-motion

 

[Starkville]

Poor little Sierra. I’m pretty sure she’s the 12-year old who ran to the neighbors in the middle of the night, and had her front teeth missing. She smiles with her mouth closed in every photo I’ve seen of the family. Breaks my damn heart.

 

[kdg411]

Anyone who wants to take a Google drive for clarity...

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7038406,-123.8038137,0a,53.4y,190.97h,81.58t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sC_JwKLSfbkOSvN7t-mj0ag!2e0

 

[Eloise]

Anyone who wants to take a Google drive for clarity...

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.703...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sC_JwKLSfbkOSvN7t-mj0ag!2e0

That's a straight stretch of road, and if the driver simply fell asleep I don't think that's really where you'd drive off of :thinking:

 

[tara83]

Poor little Sierra. I’m pretty sure she’s the 12-year old who ran to the neighbors in the middle of the night, and had her front teeth missing. She smiles with her mouth closed in every photo I’ve seen of the family. Breaks my damn heart.

The neighbors said one of the moms claimed she didn't want to get them fixed.I can't think of a single 12 year old girl I've ever met who isn't concerned about her looks and wouldn't want something done about missing her front teeth!

 

[UltraViolet4545]

OK all you math whiz's, here's the formula to calculate some things- distance over cliff, speed, etc.

I have to go feed some hungry horses but when I come back in I hope some of you have this all figured out. Have at it.

https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-f...iff-at-a-certain-speed-and-its-path-of-motion

Unsure if I did this right, but I’m coming up with them landing roughly 200 feet out from the cliff’s edge (the point where the wheels lost contact). If the cliff slopes at all, they could appear to have landed closer than they did (if that makes sense).

 

[gcharlie]

I'm waiting for the autopsy results and anything that might come off the data recorder in the vehicle.

Not sure how much LE is interviewing past and current neighbors at this point.

So far, not much has been said from official sources about the home or the care these children received. Once the story broke about the Turpin family, it was known fairly quickly that those kids did not receive regular medical or dental care. Crickets in that regard with this family.

There is still so much that is not known.

 

[enelram]

Unsure if I did this right, but I’m coming up with them landing roughly 200 feet out from the cliff’s edge (the point where the wheels lost contact). If the cliff slopes at all, they could appear to have landed closer than they did (if that makes sense).

Sounds good to me. Can you tell us the formula you used, and speed used.
Also wouldn't the vehicle bounce when it first hit land? I'm thinking that's why the kids ejected.

 

[debbiegarcia36]

I have a hard time buying the 90 mph speed. Maybe that was the speed the wheels were turning while the car was falling. Once the car would be off the ground there would be no friction on the tires, so they would start to spin faster. Also to go off the cliff at 90 mph the car would have had to first make a 90 degree turn off the highway. You can not make a 90 degree turn at 90 mph. It's impossible. The fastest speed professional race car drivers can do it is about 70 to 80 mph, and they leave a lot of tire marks doing it. These women were no race car drivers. No way could they have been going more then 40 or 50 mph on the gravel. IMHO.

As for the arc. Keep in mind that the cliff is not completely vertical. Below is what the arc could have looked like. But honestly whatever speed the car was going, I think it probably hit the cliff a few times on the way down and bounced. That SUV is heavy. It can't go very far in the air.

Great theory! Makes a lot of sense.

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[Stunned]

Definitely doesn't make sense. If it was traveling at any speed, it would have landed at some distance away from the cliff (unless the car washed up onto the rocks after landing, which I find would be highly unlikely given the weight of the vehicle). To me, it seems like the car went over the edge slowly in order for it to land on the rocks right below and not the water.

Another thing I don't get is the kids being found outside the car while both adults were inside, strapped in. For some reason I keep thinking they either made the kids jump/or pushed them off, and then got into the car themselves and drove off of the cliff slowly.

That is so chilling too even think about. And yet...where are the missing souls?

 

[claudianunes]

That had to be intentional. I also think the three missing kids were not in the vehicle at that point. I just hope LE is actually looking for them in other places than in the crash location.

 

[UltraViolet4545]

Sounds good to me. Can you tell us the formula you used, and speed used.
Also wouldn't the vehicle bounce when it first hit land? I'm thinking that's why the kids ejected.

I did it again and cleaned my estimations up a little. This time, I used a cliff height of 100 feet (rounded slightly to 30m for the equation) and a speed of 40 m/s which is 89.48 mph. I also rounded gravity to an even 10.

s = 0.5 x g x t^2
30 = 0.5 x 10 x t^2
30 = 5 x t^2
6 = t^2
t = 2.4 seconds

Distance = velocity x time

2.4s x 40m/s = 96m

With these numbers, it puts them at 314 feet out from the cliff. So depending on what numbers you use/how you round, it will vary. I think roughly 300 feet is more accurate than my first answer of 200 though.

 

[Zelda1010]

Poor little Sierra. I’m pretty sure she’s the 12-year old who ran to the neighbors in the middle of the night, and had her front teeth missing. She smiles with her mouth closed in every photo I’ve seen of the family. Breaks my damn heart.

WaPo identified the girl as 16 year old HH.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...me-life-neighbors-say/?utm_term=.4112217878c5

Bruce DeKalb recalled how one night, about three or four months after the Harts moved into the house next door last year, Hannah Hart pounded on his door. She was “covered in weeds” after jumping out of the family’s second-story window and running through the woods to reach DeKalb’s house, he said. She ran up DeKalb’s stairs, found the bedroom and woke up DeKalb’s wife, Dana.

“That kid was totally losing her mind, just rattled to the bone,” Bruce DeKalb told The Washington Post. “You can’t fake that.”


Sarah and Jennifer Hart and the rest of their children then rushed into DeKalb’s house, looking for Hannah. They found her upstairs, crouched between the bed and the dresser. After Jennifer Hart spoke with Hannah, she came down and apologized to the DeKalbs.

The family came back the next day with an apology letter, and the parents introduced each of the children to their neighbors. DeKalb said he learned Hannah, who he thought was around 7 years old, was a teenager. She was missing her front teeth.

“They had some story about her getting them knocked out and said she didn’t want them fixed,” DeKalb said.

Sarah and Jennifer Hart told the couple that their children were not being abused, and said that Hannah was having a rough week because her cat had just died.