Two days after the car fell off a cliff in the Malibu area, two are still missing

Authorities continue to search for two people believed to have been in a car that veered off a mountain road in Ventura County at 2 a.m. Sunday and rolled 1,000 feet down a cliff.

A white Cadillac Escalade crashed northwest of Malibu on Deer Creek Road, about two miles from where the road meets the Pacific Coast Highway, according to Officer Ryan Ayala, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. A day and a half after the collision, one of the passengers reported two other passengers missing, he said.

A search of the vehicle and surrounding area on Monday and Tuesday yielded no results, and no one has been examined at any local hospitals for injuries related to the vehicle crash, Ayala said. The CHP also was unable to locate any of the missing residents at the addresses provided by the reporting party, he said.

“It’s a really, really strange situation,” he said. “At this point we need to verify that the other two people in the vehicle are safe.”

According to a CHP news release, the reporting passenger told authorities that he was able to extricate himself from the accident and walk to a nearby street where he was picked up. He was sitting in the passenger seat and suffered some injuries to his right arm and abrasions from the seat belt, Ayala said. It was unclear why he waited almost two days to report the missing inmates.

The Ventura County Fire Department assisted with the search at the scene and said in a statement Monday evening that one of the passengers had been found safe at home.

Ayala said this was inaccurate information and that the CHP, which is leading the investigation, had not been able to confirm that either of the two missing inmates were safe as of Wednesday afternoon.

When asked about the statement, the fire department referred questions to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the CHP, the search was conducted with assistance from the county fire department, Sheriff’s Office, Ventura County Search and Rescue and the Oxnard Fire Department. The search included drones, helicopters, police dogs and search and rescue teams on foot, Ayala said.

“We used all the resources available to us at the time,” he said.

The ground search is now complete and the CHP is continuing its investigation with assistance from a law enforcement agency in Washington state, where the car is registered, Ayala said.

According to preliminary evidence, the accident apparently occurred after the driver failed to turn on a curve in the road and missed the guardrail, causing the car to roll down the hill several times before coming to rest on its roof, he said.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact CHP Investigator Tucker at 805-662-2640.