(CNN) The mysterious California seaside crash in which at least five members of a family were killed is being labeled a crime by the man heading up the investigation.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman told HLN's "Crime & Justice with Ashleigh Banfield" on Wednesday that Jennifer Hart was driving her family's SUV when it went over a California cliff last week.

No one in the SUV was wearing a seatbelt, according to police.

"I'm to the point where I no longer am calling this an accident; I'm calling it a crime," Allman told HLN.

The sheriff said investigators were also looking at a cell phone found near the accident scene on the Northern California coast.

The bodies of Jennifer and Sarah Hart were found on March 26 inside the family's SUV, which had crashed at the rocky shoreline below a cliff. The bodies of three of their children -- Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14, and Abigail, 14 -- were found nearby.

But their three other children -- Devonte, 15, Hannah, 16, and Sierra, 12 -- are missing, officials said. Investigators believe the missing children were inside the vehicle at the time of crash.

A large-scale search and rescue operation for the three missing children continued Wednesday, with about 80 people combing the surrounding area.

A tip led authorities to have divers search the water near the coastline about 30 or 40 miles south of the scene, but Allman said there was nothing yet to report from the search there.

Earlier Wednesday, the California Highway Patrol released a photo of Jennifer Hart shopping at a grocery store a day before her family's SUV plunged off a cliff.

Police also released a fuller timeline of the Hart family's movements before the fatal crash. The Hart family was in and around the Newport, Oregon area around 8:15 a.m. on March 24, and officials believe they then drove south along US 101 until they reached Leggett, California.

The family then traveled south along state Route 1 until they reached Fort Bragg around 8 p.m. that night, and remained there for about a day, police said. California Highway Patrol released an image from surveillance cameras of Jennifer Hart at a Safeway in Fort Bragg on the morning of March 25.

Jennifer Hart shops at a Safeway in Fort Bragg, California the day before her family's SUV plunged off a cliff.

No skid marks

Police had earlier said that several facts led them to believe the crash may have been intentional.

"At this point in our investigation, that is the direction we are going," said Greg Baarts of the California Highway Patrol's Northern Division.

There were no skid marks in the area leading up to the fatal crash.

And there were no witnesses to help guide police on what happened. The SUV was discovered only after a passerby saw the mangled wreckage at the foot of the cliff.

Data from the vehicle's software air bag module suggests the car had stopped at the scenic highway outcrop overlooking the cliff and then accelerated off the road, Baarts said.

Family's troubling history

Jennifer and Sarah Hart once lived in Minnesota, where Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault involving one of the children in 2010, according to Douglas County court records.

That child had told an elementary school teacher of pain in her stomach and back, and bruises were discovered.

Sarah Hart told police she had spanked the child over the edge of the bathtub because of the child's behavior. She was sentenced to community service and one year of probation.

Then, about 10 months ago, the Harts moved into their home in Woodland, Washington, neighbor Bruce DeKalb said. He said the family was "very private."

Another neighbor, Bill Groener, said the children were home-schooled and kept inside most of the time.

DeKalb said Devonte and one of his sisters had told him they were being mistreated. The neighbor recalled two disturbing encounters he had with the children.

"One of the girls came to the door at 1:30 in the morning and said that she needed help and the parents were not treating her properly, and (she) wanted us to protect her," DeKalb said.

"We ended up getting her back to her parents ... and then I went over there the next morning and just checked on things, and everything seemed normal, and we let it go from there."

In 2014, Devonte garnered national attention when he embraced a white police officer at a time when racially charged protests were being held across the country, following a grand jury's decision not to indict the white officer who killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man.

Devonte helped quell tensions with his sign offering "Free Hugs," and his photo was shared around the world.

Update: This story has been updated to include new information from police. Police now say Sarah and Jennifer Hart were not wearing seatbelts as previously reported.</s>MENDOCINO, Calif. — Searchers looking for three missing children whose family’s SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff have found a cellphone that could have belonged to a member of the large brood.

There was no sign of the siblings who were missing but presumed dead in the crash that killed Sarah and Jennifer Hart and three of their other adopted children. Five bodies were found March 26 near Mendocino, a few days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts for possible child neglect.

Dozens of people combed miles (kilometres) of coastline Wednesday. The Mendocino County sheriff’s office told Portland, Ore., TV station KOIN that a searcher found a cellphone that was being analyzed.

Authorities have said that data from the vehicle’s software suggested the crash was deliberate. They said the SUV had stopped at a coastal highway overlook before speeding straight off the cliff and plummeting 100 feet (31 metres) into the rocky Pacific Ocean below.

Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota over what she said was a spanking given to one of her children.
• Data from SUV shows deadly California cliff wreck may have been intentional
• Family famed for protest photo died when SUV goes off cliff

Bruce and Dana DeKalb, the family’s next-door neighbours in Woodland, Wash., called child welfare officials two weeks ago because the couple’s 15-year-old son, Devonte, had been coming over to their house almost every day for a week, asking for food.

Dana DeKalb said Devonte told her his parents were “punishing them by withholding food.” The boy asked her to leave food in a box by the fence for him, she said.

Devonte, a black boy who is still missing, drew national attention after he was photographed in tears while hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest.</s>(AP) - Another search for three children missing after their family's SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff has turned up no sign of them. But authorities discovered a cell phone near the crash site that could have belonged to one of the family members.

 

Sarah and Jennifer Hart were found dead at March 26 along with three of their adopted children. The crash happened days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts for possible child neglect.

 

Dozens of people on Wednesday combed miles (kilometers) of coastline near the site.

 

KOIN reports the Mendocino County Sheriff's office says a searcher found a cell phone that is being analyzed.

 

Authorities have said the crash was probably deliberate.

 

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman told HLN : "I'm calling it a crime."</s>(Reuters) - Police on Monday searched the ocean off California and highways for three children missing since the sport-utility vehicle carrying their large family plunged off a cliff, killing at least six people in what may have been an intentional crash.

The family's wrecked GMC Yukon was discovered last Monday below the scenic California coastal cliff, only three days after child welfare authorities in their home state of Washington opened an investigation into allegations the children were being neglected, police and social services said.

According to court records, the family had troubles in the past when one of its two white mothers was charged with domestic assault against one of their six adopted black children.

The Hart family gained attention in 2014 after one of the children, Devonte, was photographed crying in the arms of a white police officer at a protest after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.

Driver Jennifer Hart, 38, and Sarah Hart, 38, a married couple from Washington state, were killed. So were at least three of their six adopted children, Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14, and Abigail, 14, police said.

The bodies of their three other children, Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, and Sierra, 12, were not recovered, but officials have said they believed all the children were in the vehicle and the other bodies may have been washed into the ocean.

"The search for the additional three children belonging to the family continues both at the scene, through water rescue and recovery, and other locations including routes of travel," the California Highway Patrol said in a statement. "This situation may have been an intentional act and not the result of a traffic collision."

The SUV appears to have stopped at a dirt pull-off area about 70 feet (21 meters) from the cliff at the edge of California's coastal Highway 1 in Mendocino County, about 180 miles (290 km) north of San Francisco, according to the vehicle's on-board computer.

It then accelerated over the edge, leaving no skid marks or other indications of a collision, the statement said. The SUV fell into rocks and was found partially submerged about 100 feet (30 meters) below the highway.

Police searched the family's home in Woodland, Washington, about 500 miles (805 km) north of the crash site, but found no suicide note.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services said it opened an investigation into the family for potential child neglect or abuse after a complaint on March 23.

Neighbors Dana and Bruce DeKalb told the Oregonian newspaper that Devonte had asked them for food for himself and his siblings after his parents withheld it as punishment. The DeKalbs did not respond to requests for comment.

Sarah Hart was convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault of Abigail in 2011 in Minnesota. Court documents show that one of the children, Abigail, told a teacher: "Mom hit me."</s>A cellphone was discovered near the California crash site that could have belonged to one of the family members from Woodland, Clark County.

MENDOCINO, Calif. — Another search for three children missing after their family’s SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff has turned up no sign of them. But authorities discovered a cellphone near the crash site that could have belonged to one of the family members.

Sarah and Jennifer Hart were found dead March 26 along with three of their adopted children. The crash happened days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts, of Woodland, Clark County, for possible child neglect.

Dozens of people on Wednesday combed miles of coastline near the site.

KOIN reports the Mendocino County Sheriff’s office says a searcher found a cellphone that is being analyzed.

Authorities have said the crash was probably deliberate.</s>MENDOCINO, Calif. (AP) - Another search for three children missing after their family's SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff has turned up no sign of them. But authorities discovered a cell phone near the crash site that could have belonged to one of the family members.

Sarah and Jennifer Hart were found dead at March 26 along with three of their adopted children. The crash happened days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts for possible child neglect.

Dozens of people on Wednesday combed miles (kilometers) of coastline near the site.

FILE - This March 27, 2018, file photo provided by the California Highway Patrol shows a helicopter hovering over steep coastal cliffs near Mendocino, Calif., where a vehicle, visible at lower right, plunged about 100 feet off a cliff along Highway 1, killing all passengers. The SUV carrying the Hart family, from Woodland, Wash., accelerated straight off the scenic California cliff and authorities said the deadly wreck may have been intentional. (California Highway Patrol via AP, File)

KOIN reports the Mendocino County Sheriff's office says a searcher found a cell phone that is being analyzed.

Authorities have said the crash was probably deliberate.</s>Searchers looking for three missing children of a lesbian couple whose family's SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff have found a cellphone that could have belonged to a member of the large brood.

However, there was no sign of the children who are missing but presumed dead in the crash that killed Sarah and Jennifer Hart and three of their other adopted children.

Eighty people continued to search for them on Wednesday, with divers heading near the coastline about 40 miles south from the crash.

The Mendocino County sheriff's office told Portland, Oregon, TV station KOIN that a searcher found a cellphone that was being analyzed.

News of the recovered cellphone come after the sheriff's office backtracked on claims the couple was wearing seat belts at the time of the crash.

'Information released... by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office incorrectly stated that Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart were wearing a seat-belt during the incident,' the sheriff's office said in a news release, The Oregonian reports. 'Investigators from the California Highway Patrol... determined Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart were not wearing seat-belts during the incident.'

Their children were also not wearing seat belts.

The couple, both 38, and three of their six children - Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14, and Abigail, 14 - were pulled from the wrecked SUV last week.

Their other three children - Devonte, 15, Hannah, 16, and Sierra, 12 - are presumed dead.

Investigators believe that Jennifer drove the car off the cliff intentionally as there were no skid marks and evidence shows the speedometer was 'pinned' at 90mph.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman revealed on HLN that he is now calling the crash a 'crime' instead of an accident.

The California Highway Patrol also released a photo of Jennifer Hart shopping at a grocery store just a day before the crash, and revealed more details about their movements.

The family appear to have left their home in Woodland, Washington on March 23, after a neighbor called Child Protective Services to report that the couple weren't feeding the kids.

Two days later, a family cellphone pings in Newport, Oregon, around 8.15am.

CHP believes the family then drove south on Highway 101, and then State Route 1, arriving in the Fort Bragg, California area 12 hours later.

It's believed that the family stayed the night in the area, since Jennifer was seen checking out of a Fort Bragg grocery store around 8.15am on Sunday, March 25.

Authorities say the family stayed in Fort Bragg until 9pm that evening, at which point it seems they turned around and started traveling north again on State Route 1.

It's unclear when exactly the couple drove off a cliff near Westport, California. But officials say it happened sometime between Sunday night and Monday afternoon.

Jennifer was behind the wheel at the time, with her wife in the front passenger seat. Three of their children's bodies - Abigail, Jeremiah and Markis - were found dead outside the vehicle. Their other three kids - Hannah, Sierra and Devonte - are still unaccounted for, but presumed dead.

Officials had previously said they believed all the children were in the vehicle and the other bodies may have been washed into the ocean.

Anyone with information on the Hart family is being asked to call the California Highway Patrol's Ukiah Area office at (707) 467-4000 or the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 463-4086.

On Tuesday, further details were revealed about the family's prior child abuse cases.

Records showed that the Hart children were removed from public school in Alexandria, Minnesota the day after Sarah Hart reached a probation agreement in a child abuse case on April 14, 2011.

That came a week after Hart pleaded guilty to physically abusing one of her daughters, who was six at the time.

The kids were taken out of school and moved to Oregon, where they were privately educated from there on out, the Oregonian reported.

The family later moved to Woodland, Washington, where they were living at the time of their deaths.

Investigators are now examining 'red flags' in the Washington family's past in the hope of explaining why they drove off the cliff in an apparent suicide plunge.

While investigators initially said there was no indication the crash was anything but an accident, data from the vehicle's software now suggested the incident was deliberate.

'This situation may have been an intentional act and not the result of a traffic collision,' the highway patrol said.

The SUV appears to have stopped at a dirt pull-off area about 70 feet from the cliff, according to the vehicle's on-board computer.

It then accelerated over the edge, leaving no skid marks or other indications of a collision. The SUV fell into rocks and was found partially submerged about 100 feet below the highway.

Police searched the family's home in Woodland, Washington, about 500 miles north of the crash site, but found no suicide note.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services said it opened an investigation into the family for potential child neglect or abuse after a complaint on March 23.

Days before the wreck was discovered, neighbors called authorities to say one of the youngsters had been coming to their house almost daily asking for something to eat and complaining that his parents were withholding food as punishment.

Investigators last week obtained a search warrant for the family's home in Woodland and looked for itineraries, bank and phone records, credit card receipts, journals or other documents that might shed light on the case.

The Hart family gained attention in 2014 after one of the children, Devonte, was photographed crying in the arms of a white police officer at a protest after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.</s>Start your day with the news you need from the Bay Area and beyond. 

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MENDOCINO — Another search for three children missing after their family’s SUV plunged off a Northern California cliff has turned up no sign of them. But authorities discovered a cell phone near the crash site that could have belonged to one of the family members.

Sarah and Jennifer Hart were found dead at March 26 along with three of their adopted children. The crash happened days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts for possible child neglect.

Dozens of people on Wednesday combed miles (kilometers) of coastline near the site.

KOIN reports the Mendocino County Sheriff’s office says a searcher found a cell phone that is being analyzed.

Authorities have said the crash was probably deliberate.</s>As the search continued Tuesday for three siblings and questions mounted over how the rest of their family ended up dead at the bottom of a California cliff, investigators hope a laptop and iPad yield clues, an affidavit shows.

Police seized the devices from the Woodland, Washington, home of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, on Thursday, according to court documents related to the search warrant.

In the affidavit requesting the search warrant, a Clark County, Washington, sheriff's deputy says he is seeking evidence that will shed light on what happened to the family. That evidence could include travel itineraries, bank records, phone records, credit card receipts, hotel receipts or "handwritten or typed journals or notes related to travel, care for the children and or suicide note/s."

It adds that the California Highway Patrol's investigators believe "a felony has been committed."

The bodies of Jennifer and Sarah Hart and three of their children were found in and around their SUV. The bodies of the mothers, both 38, were discovered inside their overturned SUV near a remote stretch of Highway 1 in Northern California on March 26. Jennifer Hart was in the driver's seat, according to the search warrant affidavit. What we know about the mysterious crash Emergency responders found the bodies of three of their six adopted children -- Markis, 19, and Jeremiah and Abigail, both 14 -- outside the car, which landed upside down on the rocky shoreline below the cliff. Evidence from the scene and data retrieved from the car has led investigators to believe Jennifer Hart may have intentionally drove the SUV off the cliff. Their other children -- Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, and Sierra, 12 -- are missing. Nobody reported seeing the crash. Though a police news release says the California Highway Patrol and Mendocino County Sheriff's Office are continuing an "active search" for the missing children, the search warrant affidavit says they, too, may have been in the SUV. The kids "have not been located and it is feared that they may have also been involved in the collision and presumed deceased," the affidavit says.</s>Mystery continues to surround Mendocino County as three children remain unaccounted for following a car accident on HWY. 1 that killed their parents and three siblings on March 26.

A total of eight Bay Area crews continued the search of the three children ages 12, 15 and 16 Wednesday, combing the beach and water looking for any sign of them in the city of Fort Bragg.

“We had 74 searchers out today,” said Lt. Shannon Barney from the Mendocino County Sherriff’s Office, “We wanted to cover the beaches at low tide, so that if anything drifted up, we could find it before the storm comes in tomorrow.”

A helicopter, mountain rescue teams and resources from San Mateo to Mendocino, focused on the missing children who may or may not have been aboard an SUV barreled off a cliff.

However, search crews were unable to find anything of value in the quest to find Hannah, Devonte and Sierra Hart.

The only visual confirmation of the family before the crash is a surveillance photo of someone believed to be Jennifer Lawrence, a mother of the six adopted kids, buying groceries at Safeway the morning of the tragedy.

“It’s sort of like walking around, like it feels like there are ghosts around, or something,” said Fort Bragg resident Quinn Fields.

In a town as small as Fort Bragg, the tragic accident 20 miles north of the California coastline has left people feeling shaken.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a car accident, but there’s that like slow motion moment before like impact, or whatever- but I can’t imagine hurtling off of a cliff, and what those poor kids must have been thinking,” said Fields.

Mendocino County residents have places pinwheels and flowers next to the Juan River, where the family’s SUV crashed.
Search and rescue operations continue for three children missing after an SUV crashed off a cliff and into the sea in California, killing five. The Mendocino County Sheriff says the crash was deliberate and a crime.