Woman tumbles off cliff rushing back to car with boyfriend at night, CA rescuers say

Luc Blanchou and his girlfriend had dashed back to a parking lot on the California coast in the dark, thinking his car was about to be towed, when she vanished, KPIX reported.

“I guess she couldn’t see where she was stepping and fell off the cliff,” Blanchou said, according to the station. He went back to try to find her.

“She had grabbed onto a bush,” he said, KPIX reported. “Then she fell and I couldn’t see her at all.”

The woman had plunged down a rocky 250-foot cliff near Devil’s Slide south of Pacifica at 9 p.m. Wednesday, California Highway Patrol officers reported on Facebook.

A San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy found the woman, who was seriously injured, partway down the cliff using a drone, a video shows.

CHP and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters used spotlights to illuminate the cliff face for firefighters climbing down to the woman on ropes, another video shows.

Rescuers moved the woman to the bottom of the cliff, where she was taken to a hospital, CHP officers wrote.

Blanchou wrote in a comment on the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department post that he and his girlfriend had gone to the cliff to take photos of a bunker at night.

“I personally wanna thank the search and rescue team who saved her life,” he wrote.

This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 9:55 AM with the headline "Woman tumbles off cliff rushing back to car with boyfriend at night, CA rescuers say."