The California Highway Patrol has released a photo that shows Jennifer Hart just hours before her she drove off a coastal cliff.
The bodies of Jennifer Hart and her wife Sarah, both 38, were pulled from the wrecked SUV, along with three of their six kids.
Police continue to search for the three other children, but they are presumed dead.
Investigators believe that Jennifer drove the car off the cliff intentionally.
Surveillance footage shows Jennifer Hart (right) checking out of a grocery store in Fort Bragg, California just hours before she is believed to have driven off a cliff with her wife and their kids inside
Cops believe Hart drove off the cliff intentionally. She’s pictured above with her wife Sarah and their six kids. From left to right:
Three of the children’s bodies were found dead outside the car. Authorities have spent the past week trawling the ocean for the missing three children – Hannah, 16, Devonte, 15, and Sierra, 12
On Tuesday, the California Highway Patrol revealed more details about the family’s movements in the days before their deaths.
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 believe 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.
Wednesday morning, a massive search effort of more than 70 people were scheduled to look for evidence and signs of the children’s bodies at low tide.
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.
Another search for the missing children was scheduled to take place Wednesday, during low tide
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.
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
These are the tracks left by the car when it went over the edge of the cliff
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.
Long before the crash, 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.
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.