TERROR AT DEVIL'S SLIDE

AT FIRST IT LOOKED LIKE A HORRIFIC ACCIDENT. NOW AUTHORITIES SAY A FATHER CRASHED HIS CAR TO MURDER HIS WIFE AND KIDS 

- STEVE HELLING

There was no flash of brake lights, and no one heard screeching tires or a car's blaring horn. All the witnesses saw at around 10 a.m. on Jan. 2, 2023, at Devil's Slide-a stretch of treacherous, rocky coastline on Highway 1 about 15 miles south of San Francisco-was a white Tesla carrying a family of four, careening at full speed over the edge of a rocky embankment. The luxury electric vehicle appeared to flip end over end as it dropped some 300 ft. before crash-landing just feet from the waves of the Pacific Ocean. "I saw it disappear in midair, going down," says Robin Johnson, who drove by just as the Tesla took a sharp turn over the edge. "When I pulled over to the side of the road and looked down, I could see the car all crushed and mangled. I think everyone thought that there were no survivors."

Miraculously they were wrong. The driver, Dharmesh Patel, a 41-year-old doctor from Pasadena, was seriously injured in the crash, along with his wife, Neha, also 41. Their daughter, then 7, and son, 4, whose names have not been released, were sitting in the back seat, both in car seatsone child required medical treatment, but the other sustained only "bumps and bruises but no injuries," according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

The Patel family's unfathomable survival has stunned police and medical personnel, who respond to similar accidents at Devil's Slide every year and normally see tragic, gruesome fatalities. "To see the kids up and moving around and to see both adults alive in the car was nothing short of a miracle," says Shaun Bouyea, a flight officer and paramedic with the California Highway Patrol. "Seeing that changed the tone from somber to something happier."