Press "Enter" to skip to content

Drive to haunted spot in Saitama ends in tragedy as car plunges off cliff

A car carrying four teenage boys plunged off a cliff in Chichibu City on Saturday
A car carrying four teenage boys plunged off a cliff in Chichibu City on Saturday (Fuji News Network)

SAITAMA (TR) – A teenage boy was killed and three others injured after their car plunged off a cliff while they were driving to a location considered haunted in Chichibu City on Saturday, reports Fuji News Network (Apr. 23).

At around 9:30 p.m., the vehicle is believed to have crashed into a large rock on the road, forcing the car into another lane before it smashed through a guardrail and plunged 15 meters on a road in the town of Yokoze, Saitama Prefectural Police said.

The 18-year-old driver of the car died after suffering a strong blow to the chest. Another boy, also 18, was seriously injured, and two other 18-year-old passengers suffered light injuries.

The driver, who had been friends with the group since middle school, likely lost control of the vehicle when the car’s air bag opened upon colliding with the egg-shaped rock, which measured roughly 50 centimeters long and 30 centimeters wide.

“We were on the road when it felt like we hit something, and then the air bag deployed on the driver’s side, so we couldn’t see where we were going,” one of the teenagers in the front passenger seat told the Yomiuri Shimbun (Apr. 23).

Police said the cause for how the rock ended up on the road is being investigated, adding that there was rain at the time but no reports of falling rocks.

The group was headed to a supposedly haunted area not far from the scene of the accident that they had read about on an internet site when the tragedy took place.