The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said it has yet to locate Devonte Hart, 15, Hannah Hart, 16, and Sierra Hart, 12, of Woodland, Wash., despite an ongoing search operation that on Wednesday enlisted multiple agencies, including Lake County Search and Rescue, to scour a stretch of coast in the Fort Bragg area.
The children’s parents, Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart, both age 38, died along with the family’s other three children, Markis Hart, 19, Jeremiah Hart, 14, and Abigail Hart, 14, when their GMC Yukon LX SUV went off a 100-foot cliff from a dirt turnout along Highway 1 at County Road 430, just south of Juan Creek in Westport last week, as Lake County News has reported.
Authorities said they still don’t know when the crash took place; the vehicle, spotted by a passerby, was found upside down on a large rock in the ocean on the afternoon of Monday, March 26.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol are leading parallel investigations into the crash, with authorities saying they believe the wreck was intentional.
A Thursday update on the search efforts from Capt. Greg Van Patten of the sheriff’s office corrected a previous statement from officials that said Jennifer and Sarah Hart were wearing their seat belts.
Investigators from the California Highway Patrol Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team have since determined, based on an inspection of the SUV, that the two women were not wearing seat-belts during the crash, Van Patten said.
Similarly, it had previously been concluded that the three children whose bodies were found on the crash scene – two on the rocky shoreline, one in the water – also had not been wearing seat belts and had been ejected from the vehicle.
Authorities continue to believe that the entire Hart family was traveling together, with the three missing children thought to have been inside of the SUV at the time of the crash, Van Patten said.
“Information obtained through interviews with family and friends indicated it was rare for the family to be apart, especially while traveling,” he said.
Van Patten said that information coupled with the other children being recovered outside of the vehicle on March 26, “supports the possibility that the missing children were swept away from the crash scene by the Pacific Ocean.”
He added, “The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office will continue to focus a majority of our resources searching with this theory in mind until other information or leads suggestion otherwise.”
On Wednesday, numerous agencies from Mendocino, Lake, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin and other Bay Area counties, along with 74 volunteer searchers and 10 law enforcement personnel participated in shoreline and aerial searches of the Mendocino County coastline, but the three missing children were not found, Van Patten reported.
He said the Wednesday search focused on the area from Noyo Harbor to MacKerricher State Park based upon ocean current and drift pattern analysis conducted by the US Coast Guard. A further search was conducted at the crash site and also focused to the south of that location.
Further large scale search and rescue operations are being postponed due to a pending weather event expected to bring heavy rain and winds to the Mendocino County coast for the next few days, Van Patten said.
However, he said searches of the Mendocino County coastline will continue with on-duty patrol deputies as calls for service allow until search and rescue operations can be safely resumed following the storms.
The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office also issued a missing persons flier highlighting the missing children in an effort to generate leads about their whereabouts or to find people who had seen them sometime around March 26. The flier is posted below.
Any information related to the investigation can be emailed to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office email account at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by calling 707-234-2100.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
040518 Hart children missing persons flier by LakeCoNews on Scribd