VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Rough waters at the oceanfront prevented a diving team from retrieving the car that drove off the Virginia Beach Fishing Pier into the ocean Saturday morning.
Investigators said Sunday morning they had a plan in place to attempt to retrieve the car, but efforts by Crofton Diving and Salvage failed and had to be called off because of rough waters.
Virginia Beach Police Public Information Officer Jude Brenya said police are working on another plan to get the car out of the water.
"We do know where the vehicle is at," Brenya explained. "It's still stationary in the last location that we checked so we are going to keep monitoring it. We are going to go back on the planning board and try to see when we can come back out,"
Officials said they will make another attempt in the week ahead.
At this point, the details about who was behind the wheel of the car and why they ended up on the pier remain unknown.
Video showed the car drive toward the end of the pier, which sits between 14th and 15th streets, briefly pause, and then go off the end into the ocean.
“My first reaction was I was feeling very surprised and then very sad," said Manon Scholl, who works at Ocean Eddie’s on the pier.
Scholl said she was woken up Saturday morning by a phone call from a friend telling her what happened.
“I was really confused. I was, like, what do you mean somebody drove off the pier? That’s obviously very hard," said Scholl.
It is difficult to see how what happened could have been an accident as the driver had to break through not one but two barriers to get onto the pier.
Additionally, cellphone video shows the driver braking several times while on the pier before driving off and into the water.
"I have a lot of family members who have suffered through mental illness in the past and seeing this just made me think about all the times I could’ve protected someone," Scholl said.
Late Saturday afternoon, police tape was still up on the pier and the area where the car broke through and drove down the pier was still boarded up.
Virginia Beach police and firefighters quickly responded and, using sonar equipment, the police Marine Division worked to locate the vehicle.
The news of what happened traveled fast.
"We grew up here. I’m 53 years old and I’ve never heard of it," one man said as he and another man stood on the pier near the police tape. "I had to come see."
One fisherman said the water at the end of the pier is about 15 feet deep.
