JANIE HAR
FILE – In this March 29, 2018 file photo, Deputy Bill Holcomb looks down the cliff near the crash site near Mendocino, Calif., as search and rescue volunteers scour the area behind him on and resume looking for children, still missing after their parent’s SUV plunged into the ocean Monday. A California Highway Patrol investigator testified Thursday, April 4, 2019 that Sarah Hart searched whether death by drowning was relatively painless hours before her wife drove an SUV off a cliff, killing them and six adopted children in waters below. A special coroner’s jury in Mendocino County is trying to determine whether the March 2018 deaths were murder-suicide or accidental. (Kale Williams/The Oregonian via AP)
SAN FRANCISCO – A special coroner’s jury in California ruled the deaths of two women and their six adopted children was a murder-suicide after hearing testimony that one of the women had searched death by drowning online and the other deliberately stepped on the gas, sending their SUV plunging off a cliff.
Jurors deliberated for about an hour Thursday before returning the unanimous verdicts that Jennifer and Sarah Hart killed themselves on March 26, 2018, in Mendocino County. The jury decided the six children, 12 to 19, died at the hands of another and not by accident.
Authorities had indicated they believed the crash was deliberate but wanted a jury to make official findings.
A coroner’s inquest is generally used in cases involving in-custody deaths or officer-involved shootings where public interest is high and the need for transparency critical, said Mendocino County sheriff’s Capt. Gregory L. Van Patten.
The deaths drew national attention, partly because the women were alleged to have abused their children. The body of Devonte Hart, 15, who was black and had gained attention when he was photographed in tears while hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest in Portland, Oregon, has not been recovered.
Jurors were instructed to choose from four manners of death for each of the eight people: natural causes, suicide, accident or an intentional act by another. They sat through nearly two full days of testimony.
“It is my belief that both Jennifer and Sarah succumbed to a lot of pressure,” sheriff’s Lt. Shannon Barney said Thursday. “Just a lot of stuff going on in their lives, to the point where they made this conscious decision to end their lives this way and take their children’s lives.”
The crash happened days after authorities in Washington state opened an investigation into allegations of neglect. The bodies of both women were found in the vehicle, which landed below a cliff located more than 160 miles (250 kilometers) north of San Francisco.
The Hart family had fled their Woodland, Washington, home March 23 after a visit from social workers that day.
Jennifer Hart searched suicide, drowning, Benadryl dosages and overdose methods on the internet throughout the drive to California, said California Highway Patrol investigator Jake Slates. She also queried whether death by drowning would be painful. Authorities recovered the deleted searches from her phone.
“They both decided that this was going to be the end,” Slates said. “That if they can’t have their kids that nobody was going to have those kids.”
The bodies of siblings Markis, Jeremiah and Abigail were found the same day near the car. Weeks later, the body of Ciera Hart was pulled from the Pacific Ocean. Hannah Hart was eventually identified through a DNA match.
Slates said that Jennifer Hart, who rarely drank, had a blood alcohol level over the legal limit and may have been “drinking to build up her courage.” Sarah Hart had 42 doses of generic Benadryl in her system and the children also had high amounts of the sleep-inducing drug in their bodies, he said.
A neighbor of the Harts had filed a complaint with the state, saying the children were apparently being deprived of food as punishment. No one answered when social workers went to the family’s home.
A witness who was camping by their vehicle says he heard their car rev up and peal out around 3 a.m. March 26.
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. Oregon child welfare officials also investigated the couple in 2013, but closed the case without taking any action.
Source: Fox News National
SAN FRANCISCO – An investigator says that soon before her wife drove their family off a cliff, Sarah Hart researched whether it was relatively painless to die by drowning.
The California Highway Patrol investigator testified about the searches Thursday in Mendocino County.
A special coroner’s jury is trying to determine whether the March 2018 deaths of the couple and their six adopted children were murder-suicide or accidental. Authorities have called the deaths intentional, but want a jury to decide.
Jake Slates said at the inquest that Jennifer Hart, who rarely drank, was extremely intoxicated and may have been “drinking to build up her courage.”
Sarah Hart and the children had high amounts of Benadryl in their systems.
The crash happened days after Washington state authorities began investigating whether the children were being neglected.
Source: Fox News National
This Sept. 12, 2015, photo provided by Jacqueline Sones shows a Janolus Nudibranch in Bodega Harbor, Calif. A new study reports that dozens of warm-weather species of sea slugs, jellyfish and other marine life migrated into the northern California region over an unusually long two-year period of severe heatwaves. The University of California, Davis report is to be published Tuesday, March 12, 2019, in Scientific Reports. (Jacqueline Sones via AP)
SAN FRANCISCO – Dozens of species of sea slugs, jellyfish and other marine life from toastier southern waters migrated into the Northern California region over an unusually long two-year period of severe heatwaves, says a new scientific report.
The 67 species identified in the report include a carnivorous sea slug that preys on other sea slugs and a sea snail "butterfly" usually spotted hundreds of miles away off the coast of Mexico. The study by the University of California, Davis is to be published Tuesday in Scientific Reports.
Not all the species stuck around, but the abundance of migration provides a glimpse of what the Northern California coast might look like in the future, said Eric Sanford, lead author and UC Davis professor.
"I’ve been working here for 14 years and before our very eyes we are seeing a shift in the local marine communities," he said.
The 2014-2016 period studied by researchers began in the Gulf of Alaska as a persistently warm patch in 2013 known as the "warm-water Blob" that spread south. Later, an El Nino event along the equator moved north, and the two factors led to unusually warm waters.
Temperatures in Northern California waters, which normally range from 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 13 Celsius), increased 3.5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Larry Crowder, a professor at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station who is not affiliated with the study, said the report is impressive in documenting how species respond to change differently and, in some cases, dramatically.
He said the report could help studies in fisheries management.
"We’re not sure what it means in terms of positive or negative consequences," Crowder said, but he says "the system is changing under our feet."
Of the 67 species, researchers documented 37 had set new records in traveling north.
Sanford said the first species they noticed was a purple striped jellyfish that washed up by their research laboratory in Bodega Bay, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) north of San Francisco. That was in July 2014.
"That was the first indication that we were starting to see unusual things," he said.
From there, researchers catalogued chocolate porcelain crabs, a species that has been in Northern California for about a decade but which boomed in population in warmer temperatures. They found violet sea snails, only the fourth known record of the species north of Santa Barbara County, and a type of sea slug called the Janolus Nudibranch, usually found south of Monterey County.
Sanford doesn’t necessarily view the changes as negative, but migration will affect the ecosystem. Researchers, for example, discovered that a species of sea slug that eats other sea slugs has moved north —and appears to be sticking around.
"There’s potential for that species to change the community by eating other species," he said.
Source: Fox News National
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