Driver Dies After Going Off 1,000-foot Cliff in Grant County-UPDATE

The Grant County Sheriff's Office continues to investigate why a car went off a steep cliff near the Columbia River, it was found Saturday afternoon.

UPDATE   see below story 

   Driver dies in crash

Around 3 PM Saturday afternoon, authorities were alerted about a car that was sitting on a shale slide (a large area of loose rocks that have slid down from a steep cliff) about 100 feet from the Columbia River near Crescent Bar.

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The location is near a popular recreation area, north of the Gorge at George and west of Quincy, WA in Grant County.  The witnesses who spotted the car were able to make their way to it and found the driver inside, deceased.

The GCSO and other agencies responded to the area and ended up using a Sheriff's Marine Boat Unit to land on the shore, and then walk up to the shale area to recover the body. No information about the deceased person was released, they were the only occupant.

The GCSO estimates the car likely went off the 1,000-foot cliff sometime around midnight Friday into Saturday.  The body is in the custody of the Grant County Coroner, more information will be released following the completion of the autopsy. No other information has been released yet.

UPDATE--the Grant County Coroner and investigators have concluded the driver of the car, and sole occupant, was a 55-year-old man from East Wenatchee, and the incident is determined to have been suicide. The GCSO does not release or publish names of suicide victims.