Witnesses in Shock After SUV Smashes Through Barriers, Drives Straight Off Pier into the Ocean
A mystery lies at the end of the Virginia fishing pier in the form of an SUV that was driven off it on Saturday.
Virginia Beach police said the incident took place just before 7 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
Authorities do not who is in the vehicle or why it was driven off the pier. Anyone inside is presumed dead.
As of Monday, they were still unable to recover the SUV, the newspaper reported.
“From what we have, the vehicle went on the pier, drove all the way off the edge of the pier and went into the water,” Virginia Beach police spokesman Jude Brenya said. “So it’s somewhere at the end of the pier right now.”
Kaylynn Crawford, 16, and a friend were taking a video of the sunrise that morning when they heard a vehicle smash through gates leading to the pier. They watched in horror as the vehicle drove off the pier.
“Is he gonna drive off the edge?” the teen said.
“No f***ing way,” Kaylynn said. “Dude, no.”
The girls gasped as the car reached the end of the pier and plunged into the ocean.
The video was posted to Facebook by her father, Jeremy Crawford. It had more than 3 million views as of Tuesday morning.
WARNING: The following video contains language that some viewers may find offensive.
“Once they sped up, I was like, ‘Oh no, he’s going to drive off the pier,’” Kaylynn told the Virginian-Pilot.
The brake lights of the vehicle appeared to be on for some of its trip down the long, wooden pier.
Debbie Lou Hague, owner of Ocean Eddie’s restaurant at the front of the pier, said this was no accident.
“Somebody drove their car through all of our gates,” she said. “That’s a heavy gate. It’s hard to move for me when I go in the morning.”
On Sunday, a crew from Crofton Industries tried to haul up the vehicle from about 15 feet of water, but conditions were unsuitable for the task, according to WTKR-TV in Norfolk.
“We do know where the vehicle is at. It’s still stationary in the last location that we checked, so we are going to keep monitoring it. We are going to go back [to] the planning board and try to see when we can come back out,” Brenya said.
Police released videos of the vehicle on Monday taken by a remotely operated camera.
Ocean currents measured 3.9 knots, 4X outside the safety parameters for VBPD’s divers. Strong currents & extremely low visibility made it too dangerous for divers to navigate & assess the area safely, especially near a submerged SUV rocking on its roof in the turbulent current. pic.twitter.com/aNEis6uPJF
— Virginia Beach Police Department (@VBPD) January 29, 2024
On Monday, Brenya said police do not know who was driving and if there was a passenger in the vehicle, which has been identified as an SUV, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
Police are not releasing the make or model of the SUV and have been unable to read the license plate, Brenya said.
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