Hart family car that plunged off California cliff accelerated 'until it hit the bottom', investigators say

Investigators are probing for clues in crash that killed both parents and three children, with three other children still missing

The Hart family at a Bernie Sanders rally in Vancouver, Washington (Tristan Fortsch/KATU News via AP)

A family’s fatal plunge off of a cliff in California may have been intentional, authorities said.

Evidence shows that the SUV carrying married couple Jennifer and Sarah Hart and their six adopted children accelerated to 90 miles (145 km) per hour before it plummeted into the base of a cliff along the Pacific Ocean.

“This incident may have been an intentional act and not the result of a traffic collision”, Greg Baarts of the California Highway Patrol said in a conference call with reporters.

After the vehicle paused before approaching the cliff’s edge, Mr Baarts said, it underwent “pure acceleration…until it hit the bottom of the cliff”.

Three of the children onboard have been confirmed dead, and three others remain unaccounted for. While the search for the remaining three children continues, authorities have acknowledged that they likely did not survive.

“We have every indication to believe that all six children were in there”, Mendocino County Sheriff Thomas Allman told reporters last week.

One of the missing children, Devonte Hart, had a moment in the national spotlight when he was photographed weeping and hugging a police officer during a protest in Portland over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

An emerging portrait of the Hart family has uncovered red flags about the treatment of the children.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services confirmed that it received a referral from Child Protective Services identifying the Hart children as “potential victims of alleged abuse or neglect”. Investigators attempted to make contact with the family in person three times in the days preceding the crash.

“We have not made any findings in this investigation and we had no prior history with this family”, a spokeswoman said.

Court records also show that Sarah Hart told Minnesota authorities in 2011 that she had spanked her then-six-year-old daughter and let “her anger get out of control” after the girl was found with bruises at school.