SANTA CRUZ
An 82-year-old man is dead after driving his car off the city-owned wharf in Santa Cruz in what police believe was an accident.
The man, whose name has not been released, had turned into a parking space Thursday afternoon when he hit the curb, crashed through a wooden railing and sank in the ocean below.
Police say he may have hit the gas when he meant to hit the brakes.
It took rescue divers about 15 minutes to break the windows of his submerged car and bring him 25 to 30 feet up to the surface. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Authorities say the incident marked the fifth time in 26 years that a car has driven off the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. The last death occurred in 1996, when an elderly English man accidentally crashed his car through the railing.
Information from: Santa Cruz Sentinel, http://www.santacruzsentinel.com
