“We will see what happens at the preliminary hearing what Mrs. San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said in an email Tuesday that a representative for Neha Patel alerted prosecutors that she would not sit for a subsequent law enforcement interview until she recovered from her injuries. “She said that suspect Patel drove them off and repeated this multiple times.”Īnother emergency worker heard her say Patel drove off the cliff on purpose and “tried to kill everyone,” Sapien wrote. “She then told him that her husband needs a psych evaluation,” Sapien wrote. Dharmesh Patel has pleaded not guilty of intentionally driving the family’s Tesla off a cliff in San Mateo County. While being pulled from the car, the wife told an emergency worker “something to the effect that the driver, her husband Dharmesh Patel, did it on purpose,” CHP officer Aaron Sapien wrote in the search warrant affidavit, a three-page probable cause statement seeking grounds to seize Patel’s property.ĭharmesh Patel (left) and wife Neha Patel in a 2019 photo. Rescuers had to rappel down the steep cliff face to rescue the family. 2 when the Tesla tumbled down the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Patel was driving his car southbound on Highway 1 just after 11 a.m. It is unclear what detectives found in the devices. Investigators said they planned to search the tablets for incriminating text messages and social media or internet searches. The search warrant, one of two unsealed by San Mateo County judges in the case, led to the seizure of Patel’s two iPads, found in a backpack beneath the Tesla wreckage. Attempts to reach Neha Patel directly were unsuccessful. In February, his attorney, Joshua Bentley, told a judge that his client’s wife did not want her husband to be prosecuted.Ī call and email to Bentley were not returned Tuesday. Patel has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder. The document includes witness accounts, forensic findings from the scene, a discussion of Patel’s mental health and and footage of the crash from the nearby Tom Lantos Tunnels, as well as the explanation Patel gave investigators as to why his white 2021 Tesla Model Y flew off a cliff before landing, wheels down, 330 feet below on a rocky beach.Īccording to the documents, Patel, a Pasadena radiologist, claimed he pulled off the road to check on a possible flat tire. The newly obtained search warrant affidavit provides the clearest picture yet of what authorities believe led up to the wreck that nearly claimed the lives of the Patels, both 41, and their two children, 4 and 7.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |