Posted on 04/01/2018 4:52:59 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The speedometer of a Washington state family’s SUV was “pinned” at 90 mph when the vehicle was found Monday afternoon, crushed along the rocks of a Northern California shoreline, court documents say.
Authorities included the information in an affidavit for a search warrant for the home of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, adoptive parents of six children -- all of whom are believed to have perished when the vehicle plunged off the Pacific Coast Highway, Fox 12 Oregon reported.
The two women and three of the children were found dead at the crash site Monday, but it was unclear how much time had elapsed between the accident and the discovery.
Three other children are missing and may have been carried out to sea, authorities have said.
The family had been living in Oregon until last year when they moved to Woodland, Wash.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officers believe "a felony has been committed" in the case, the court documents say.
The exact nature of the suspected felony was not known, but according to the documents, "Based upon the California Highway Patrol investigation, it is their belief ‘a felony has been committed,’” Fox 12 Oregon reported.
However, authorities maintain there’s no evidence to suggest the crash was intentional, the Oregonian reported.
The court documents indicate that CHP investigators found no “acceleration marks, tire friction marks or braking furrow marks” at the scene, and there was no evidence the car collided with the embankment as it “traversed towards the tidal zone below,” Fox 12 reported.
According to the Oregonian, friends’ depictions and social media posts of the Hart family are at odds with police records.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
What's telling to me are two things. One, no marks on the highway or shoulder. If this was an accident - driver distracted momentarily etc. you would expect some attempt at correction - braking and or turning. That should leave significant, easily identifiable marks in the dirt of the shoulder of the road. I've seen this first hand - witnessed a motorcycle accident, and after assisting with getting the rider life-flighted out helped fire and police investigators find the exact point at which he departed the roadway - for measurements and speed estimation based on where he and the bike came to rest (he was flying, literally and figuratively).
Two, they said there were no marks on the hillside, the vehicle impacted in the tidal area. That does point to a fair amount of reckless and/or intentional speed to "fly" over the hillside and land in the flat. Again, it depends on the height and slope, but investigators will be able to estimate speed fairly well from this. Generally speaking, you've got to be going very fast because that 32.174 ft per second per second acceleration begins moving you down very rapidly. To clear an obstacle (ie. not impact the hillside) you've got to have a lot of horizontal speed and/or a bit of an up vector.
Homosexuals have no business “having” children.
The speedometer is driven by a gear that mounts to the transmission case.
Whether it was the front wheels or rear wheels spinning (driven by the engine) is totally dependent on whether this was a front wheel drive or rear wheel drive or 4-wheel drive.
What the LEO’s mean by ‘pinned’ the speedometer is NOT that this was the MAX reading possible on the speedometer, but it was where the speedometer was reading at the time it crashed. It could have been a mechanical speedometer, or an electronic one. If electronic, they got the LAST INDICATED SPEED info from the car computer.
IIRC, the vehicle was a GM YUKON 8 PASSENGER. Not sure of the year.
The only FACT that the speedometer info supports is that the DRIVER NEVER hit the brakes. It does not indicate they were doing 90mph before leaving the cliff, and the road (on a curve) makes it almost impossible to believe they were doing 90. If the driver kept their foot on the accelerator pedal, the driven wheel would be able to spin freely and show a speed of 90mph (or just about any speed) right before it hit the ground.
No. The speedometer indicated 90mph on the way DOWN because the wheels were free spinning and the driver MUST have kept their foot on the accelerator.
This only means they didn't come to a stop, then floor it(in the grassy pulloff area) to run over the cliff.
They think a mini van can burn rubber?????
It wasn't a mini-van. It was a FULL SIZE GM YUKON.
It shows they drove down the road, pulled into a parking area, and apparently drove straight off the end over a nearly vertical cliff. Making a few estimates of distance based on items of scale in the picture I put their actual speed at departure from the ground at just under 36 mph - based on a simple ballistic arc down to the impact site. Looking up the specs on a 2003 Yukon with the 5300 Vortec engine, estimating a loaded vehicle would require just less than 140 ft to accelerate 0-35. It doesn't appear there is that much room in the pull off. Also, hard acceleration would leave visible marks in what appears to be compacted gravel.
What seems more likely is a "rolling start" - they simply turned off at a normal low speed turn. Parking lot speeds are typically what, 10, 15 mph? Then for whatever reason applied modest acceleration up to 36 mph or so straight off the cliff.
Regardless, the 90 mph number is meaningless. There is no way that vehicle could have accelerated to 90 across that small parking area. Any hard acceleration would have left marks. Making a high speed turn into the gravel would've left marks (and potentially rolled the vehicle). No way they could have achieved 90 mph in that geometry. Also, it looks like their impact point was only about 65 ft horizontally (my estimate) and 100 feet vertically (their estimate) from departure. That's a vehicle speed around 35 mph give or take a few.
The 90 mph reading, if true, is an artifact of crash deformation and/or driveline spin-up during their approximately 1.24 second free-fall. The fact that they are putting that number out there makes no sense - unless you're putting a spin on the story.
“There were no parents, there dykes pretending to be normal”
This ^^^^^^^^
Here is a picture of the actual vehicle.
The speedometer indicating 90mph (or the car computer having that data in memory as last indicated speed) only means that the driver kept their foot on the gas AFTER they ran off the cliff and the wheels were spinning in the air.
Technical question: Do Chevy Suburbans (or whatever they were driving) have mechanical odometers, or LCD based ones. If electronic, or electronically driven, is it possible or likely for them to be pinned at the moment of impact, and if so, is the pinned position indicative of actual speed?
It’s like the “stopped clock” clue in an old murder mystery.
This would have been a good Mythbusters. I don’t believe for a second that normal use in a modern vehicle could cause the speedometer to get stuck on the stop. In fact, what modern vehicle pegs at 90? It was common in the 80s to pin at 86, these days cars go well into the 100s
Post 11 and Post 12. I have noticed that when posters make spelling or grammar errors, they also seem to post the mistake AT LEAST TWICE. I don’t know why that pattern keeps happening, but it does.
The word THERE should have been THEY’RE.
Absolutely.
Perverted murder and suicide. They should never of been allowed to adopt kids in the first place. The people who allowed those kids in that home have blood on their hands.
Incorrect.
You are misunderstanding what the mechanic showed you.
Your half-axle was spinning and the wheel wasn't. Your speedometer is connected to a gear in the transmission (which was spinning your half-axle) and was indicating 25mph because the transmission gears were spinning (because of the broken half-axle).
What would terminal velocity be for a SUV flying off a cliff when it hit rocks below?
You've got that right.
It could also be one of those “mistake the gas for the brake pedal” events, where in your panic, you just press it down harder, trying to stop.
My first thought.
Absolutely false. With limited-slip differential (which is completely a mechanical system), both wheels would be 'driven' and both would be spinning at up to 90mph just before the crash.
Once airborne, the wheels would sense loss of traction and the anti-slip system would kick in to release the wheel from the drive.
The 'anti-slip' system (normally called 'traction system', is a computer controlled function and is designed to detect the driven wheels going much faster than the non-driven wheels.
So, it would depend on whether this vehicle was front-wheel driven, or rear-wheel driven, or 4-wheel driven, and whether the vehicle even had a 'traction system' control, which I doubt.
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