image collage showing a car driving off the top of a park and then landing on a sidewalk
Image composite of the white sedan driving off the top of the Sanchez stairs and then landing, flipped over, on 19th Street below. Photos courtesy Julia Brown.

A white, four-door sedan drove off the Sanchez Street Stairs at 19th Street on Saturday, flipped over in mid-air, and landed on its roof on the sidewalk below, crushing several trees, according to home surveillance footage posted online.

The crash occurred Saturday at 7:18 p.m., according to the San Francisco Fire Department. No injuries were reported, and all of the occupants of the car fled the scene, the fire department said. The crashed car was towed away.

In the video, the car flies off the top of the Sanchez mini-park, a block from Dolores Park, hitting several trees and felling one on 19th Street. A pedestrian quickly rushes to the crashed car, forcing a door open for the car’s occupants to exit and yelling for someone to call 911.

Three people exit the crashed car. Two of the occupants, after being released, dash up the stairs and away from the car; one seems to yell, “I’m sorry, I love you, we gotta go.”

One occupant stays to pull a fourth and then a fifth person from the car; someone continues saying, “We gotta go.” The final three occupants leave just as a fire engine arrives on scene, some three minutes after the crash.

Several passers-by aid the occupants; others stop to film the scene.

A separate video shows the car crashing into the fence where Sanchez Street dead-ends into the park at high speed, before flying off the top of the staircase.

The San Francisco Police Department said in a statement that none of the occupants had yet been located, and that the incident remains an open investigation.

The crash and after. Video courtesy Julia Brown.
The crash and before. Video courtesy Julia Brown.

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Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, and then spent his early childhood in Chile; he moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time at YIMBY Action and as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023. You can reach him on Signal @jrivanob.99.

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12 Comments

  1. No way they were wearing seatbelts. Only reasons they aren’t all dead is 1. the car was a Crown Vic, and 2. the tree that cushioned the fall.

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  2. San Francisco permissiveness rooted in stubborn ideological beliefs keeps paying dividends.

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    1. But wait, we are all told San Francisco values are the only hope for a better world! Are you saying it’s all a big lie?

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      1. who says ‘San Francisco values are the only hope for a better world’?
        I have literally never heard anything like this.
        I have heard that SF is:
        1. a really nice place to live, and
        2. suffering a growing homeless crisis b/c #1 is making RE super expensive.
        Who says this? ‘Cuz Im calling you out for lying.
        A

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