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The miraculous survival of a California doctor and his family after he threw them off a 250-foot cliff is due to “pure luck,” experts say.
Dr. Dharmesh A. Patel, 41, has been charged with intentionally attempting to kill his wife Neha, 41, and their four-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter on Monday after he threw their car off the side of a cliff. .
speaking to nbc News, Mechanical engineering professor Jingwen Yu said Patel “probably underestimated how safe a vehicle could be, giving us ‘hope’ for the vehicle’s safety.”
He admitted that the family’s survival was also a “sort of miracle, considering the severity of the impact,” but noted that the weight of the Tesla he was driving was a contributing factor.
He pointed to the quality of the Tesla’s seat belts and hardtop, plus the fact that the car’s batteries give it a low center of gravity to prevent it from rolling over.
Patel is accused of intentionally driving his white Tesla Model Y off a cliff known as Devil’s Slide near San Francisco on Monday during a trip north. Miraculously, all four family members, Patel, his wife Neha, and their four-year-old and seven-year-old children (pictured together), survived without serious injury.
Rescuers work to recover a wrecked Tesla sedan that had plunged off a cliff on Devil’s Slide in San Mateo County, California, on Monday.
In the same feature, a mechanical engineering professor at California State University Sacramento, José Granada, said the car could not have rolled over or it would have been crushed.
Earlier, Brian Pottenger of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had told the media that he believed the car “rolled over several times.”
Rather, Granada said the car made a direct fall and landed on pebbles and sand. He likened it to landing in a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese, although the drop at top speed would have been around 80 mph.
Since then, it emerged that cops have been called to Patel’s family home in Pasadena nine times since 2017 in response to burglar alarms and reports of suspicious people in the vicinity.
Tesla’s seat belts and hardtop, plus the fact that the car’s batteries give it a low center of gravity, possibly saved the lives of the Patel family.
The move was not out of the ordinary for Patel, who was often seen pushing his four-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter in his stroller with his wife Neha, 41 (pictured together).
The incidents were either called false alarms or canceled by police, according to records seen by the LA Times. The two incidents of suspicious persons were reported as ‘missing on arrival’.
Aside from incidents reported in 2017, life for the Patels appeared to be “idyllic,” and their neighbors said the couple were always willing to talk to them.
Video from a Ring camera, obtained by the LA Times, shows Patel handing out poinsettias to his neighbors on Christmas Eve. He was overheard talking to a woman who was house-sitting for a friend who had gone on vacation.
“I’m Dharmesh,” he told the woman, adding that he lived across the street, where his white Tesla was parked outside the garage. ‘Can I leave it? [the poinsettia] at the front door?
A neighbour, Sarah Walker, told the newspaper: ‘He is so present. Dharmesh and I used to say ‘Hello’, but he would always come over and we would talk. He was always happy and willing to talk.
Rescuers initially hailed the family’s survival as a “miracle” after the Tesla sedan plummeted down a notorious cliff Monday along Pacific Coast Highway near an area called Devil’s Slide that is known for crashes. fatal.
Firefighters were forced to pull the family out of the rubble. They used a rope system to carry the children off the cliff in a rescue basket while the parents were hoisted up by helicopter.
Initially, there were questions about whether the car, which is famous for its self-driving technology, had gone rogue and mistakenly run the family off the road.
The move was not out of the ordinary for Patel, who was often seen pushing his four-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter in his stroller with his wife Neha, 41 (pictured together).
Police on Tuesday charged Patel with attempted murder and child abuse, alleging the incident was an attempted murder-suicide gone wrong.
The case brought back memories of a 2018 tragedy when a woman intentionally crashed into another Northern California cliff in an SUV with her wife and six adopted children. They were all killed.
The accident in Mendocino County occurred just days after Washington state authorities opened an investigation into allegations that Jennifer Hart’s children were being neglected.
Investigators are looking into Patel’s motive and police did not say whether detectives were able to interview him.
Investigators do not have to present the case to prosecutors until Patel is jailed.
“They are not under pressure because suspect Patel remains hospitalized and therefore can investigate the case further,” San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said in a statement.
Patel is a radiology doctor at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills area of Los Angeles.
“Providence Holy Cross Medical Center is deeply saddened to learn of a traffic incident involving one of our physicians and his family,” the statement said. “We are very grateful that there were no serious injuries. We will not respond further as this incident is under investigation.”