UPDATED: Thursday, 4:13 ET
Clothes and human remains have been found near the location where Jennifer Hart is believed to have driven her family over a cliff in late March.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s office announced in a press release on Thursday that a local resident found a pair of jeans and a shoe with what appeared to be skeletal remains inside of it about a mile from the spot where the Hart family’s SUV went over a cliff in Westport, California, on March 26.
According to the release, the resident found the clothes and the remains on a beach near the mouth of Hardy Creek.
Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart, and four of their six adopted children — Markis, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra — have been confirmed dead. Two of the children, 15-year-old Devonte Hart and 16-year-old Hannah Hart, remain missing.
The jeans are a girl’s size 10 regular, and the shoes are 3.5 “big kid” size and/or 5.5 women’s US size. As CrimeOnline previously reported, Hannah Hart is small for her age and often was mistaken for a much younger child.
According to the news release, the remains have been released to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Coroner’s Division, and DNA analysis will be performed to help identify the remains.
The release also confirmed that one of the four children had no toxicology finding. The sheriff’s office had previously announced preliminary toxicology findings: Jennifer Hart has a blood-alcohol level of .102 at the time of the crash, well over the legal limit. Sarah Hart and two of the three juvenile victims found near the crash tested positive for high levels of Diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl, which can cause marked drowsiness. The tests on the third juvenile victim were still pending at the time of the report. Sierra Hart, whose legal name is Ciera, was found in the water not far from the crash site nearly two weeks after the family’s SUV went over a cliff.
“At this time the Coroner’s Division is not releasing the names of the children associated with these toxicology findings,” the sheriff’s department stated in the release.
This is a developing story. CrimeOnline will provide further updates when more information is available.
[Feature image: The Hart Family/Thomas Boyd for The Oregonian via Associated Press]
