A vehicle sped off a cliff in southern Ocean Beach early Saturday morning, January 3, resulting in the death of the vehicle's male driver and a female passenger being airlifted to a hospital in critical condition.

"We first saw him way down around Newport [Avenue]," said a female witness who declined to provide her name and disappeared before police arrived on scene for questioning. "He just blew through all the stop signs; he must have been doing, like, 80 and barely hit the brakes right at the end of the street."

The driver was traveling southbound on Bacon Street, which makes an abrupt right turn into Coronado Avenue five blocks south of Newport, O.B.'s main drag. Land there gives way to a drop-off of approximately 60 feet, where boulders placed by the Army Corps of Engineers years ago provided a roof-first landing for the errant vehicle.

The crash drew neighbors to the corner, near where O.B. transitions into Sunset Cliffs, from a radius of several blocks, where onlookers were eventually forced away from the scene by dozens of responding police and fire-department units.

Locals slowly dispersed following the erection of a police barrier, though authorities remained at the site awaiting the arrival of a coroner. No comment was offered regarding whether alcohol was suspected to be involved in the accident.