One person is dead, and three are injured after the group of friends fell off a California cliff. One man was killed, and two others were left in critical condition after the fall before dawn on Monday.
After suffering minor injuries from the fall, a fourth person climbed back up the cliff from the beach below and alerted a passing officer at about 4:30 a.m., said Capt. Steve Barber of the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department.
Barber said, at the scene, a 25-year-old man from Los Angeles perished. He added that two women were airlifted from the accident and taken to a hospital. They are both in critical condition.
A Los Angeles County, Fire Department helicopter, was shown on TV news helicopters hoisting one of the victims to a rescue vehicle waiting at the top of the cliff.
Barber said that the incident is still under investigation by police as an accident.
KNBC-TV reported that 25-year-old Vincent Avila of Los Angeles, the man who survived the fall, was hospitalized with broken ribs and minor kidney damage.
“This is a miracle,” his mother, Irma, told the news station.
The four friends went to the cliffs Sunday night to hike and hang out, the woman was told by her son. The mother added that one of the women slipped and fell when she got up to relieve herself in the middle of the night. The others slipped and fell too when they sat at the cliff’s edge, trying to locate their friend in the dark.
Palos Verdes Estates is on the Palos Verdes Peninsula at the southern end of Los Angeles County. A trail runs along the bluff top about 300 feet (91 meters) above the Pacific Ocean.
Over the years, the area has seen several accidents and a few suicides, Barber said.
“There’s no indication at this point that this was anything other than an accident,” he said.