Startled woman drives off cliff after stranger opens her car door, California cops say
A woman drove off a beach cliff in Santa Cruz, California, after a stranger mistakenly opened her car door Thursday night, police said.
At the time, the woman was parked in a lighthouse parking lot when a person walked up to her vehicle, Santa Cruz Police Department posted on Instagram Friday morning.
Startled from the encounter, the woman drove 40 feet across a grassy field and through a metal fence, police told the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Her car tumbled off a 15-foot cliff around 9 p.m. She suffered a foot injury, but police reported no other injuries from the incident.
The man entered the car from the passenger side thinking it was his vehicle, which was a similar make and model, police wrote on Facebook. Both cars were also parked next to each other.
“This incident was truly an accident,” police said in the post. “It was dark, and the individual does not see well at night.”
A tow truck removed the car from the bottom of the cliff two hours after the accident, Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Startled woman drives off cliff after stranger opens her car door, California cops say."
