{"id":463944,"date":"2026-09-15T01:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463944\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T01:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T01:20:09","slug":"truck-plunges-into-huntington-beach-wetlands-off-pacific-coast-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463944\/","title":{"rendered":"Truck plunges into Huntington Beach wetlands off Pacific Coast Highway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A solo-vehicle crash of a pickup truck into the wetlands off Pacific Coast Highway south of Warner Avenue Saturday morning was likely an accident and did not involve intoxication on the part of the driver, police reported.<\/p>\n

The incident occurred shortly after 7:15 a.m., when police were notified that a black GMC Sierra had gone into the water, Huntington Beach police spokesperson Jessica Cuchilla confirmed Monday.<\/p>\n

The driver, described only as a male adult, was able to extricate himself by the time first responders arrived on scene. No injuries were sustained during the incident and hospitalization was not required.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The roof of a GMC Sierra pickup truck is barely visible after the vehicle plunged into the wetlands off PCH on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

(Huntington Beach Fire Department)<\/p>\n

Members of Huntington Beach Fire Department\u2019s Marine Safety Division were able to safely retrieve the submerged vehicle from the water and tow it away from the scene without closing any lanes of PCH to vehicle traffic, Cuchilla said.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s incident occurred in roughly the same stretch of highway, about 1 mile south of Warner Avenue, where 53-year-old Heather Lewis of Long Beach died in April after her vehicle was rear-ended<\/a> by a 23-year-old alleged impaired driver, becoming partially submerged.<\/p>\n

The victim in that April 15 incident succumbed to her injuries while the driver \u2014 Long Beach resident Lukas McHargue \u2014 was found in the city of Oceanside<\/a> two months later and taken into custody by Huntington Beach Police. He has been charged with one count of murder.<\/p>\n

Cuchilla indicated investigators do not believe the driver of the black pickup truck Saturday was impaired at the time of the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is being investigated as an accident,\u201d she said Monday. \u201cThe driver didn\u2019t appear to have any signs of intoxication.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A truck is pulled Saturday from the waters off PCH south of Warner Avenue, roughly the same spot in which another car was submerged in April in a fatal crash.<\/p>\n

(Huntington Beach Fire Department)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A solo-vehicle crash of a pickup truck into the wetlands off Pacific Coast Highway south of Warner Avenue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[20675,160743,287,588,4456,349,49530,131,133,132,593,31406,236,2489,178,182732,646,10532],"class_list":["post-463944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-april","tag-cuchilla","tag-driver","tag-huntington-beach","tag-incident","tag-injury","tag-intoxication","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-pacific-coast-highway","tag-pickup-truck","tag-police","tag-scene","tag-vehicle","tag-warner-avenue-saturday-morning","tag-water","tag-wetland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}