Dad pleads guilty to driving car off cliff into the ocean with twin toddlers in attempted murder-suicide

SAN DIEGO (TCN) -- A 47-year-old man will likely spend several decades in prison after he pleaded guilty to driving off a cliff and into the ocean with his two daughters in an attempted murder-suicide.

San Diego County Jail records show Robert Brians is awaiting sentencing on two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of child cruelty, two counts of kidnapping, one count of burglary, and one count of inflicting injury on a spouse/cohabitant. KUSI-TV reports Brians is expected to be sentenced to approximately 30 years in prison.

On the morning of June 13, 2020, the San Diego Police Department received a call from the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office about a suicidal male who kidnapped his 2-year-old daughters and said he was going to drive off the Coronado Bridge, which crosses over the San Diego Bay. Officer Jonathan Wiese said police received information that the man, Brians, was "possibly armed with a handgun."

Field Lt. Dave Bautista located Brians' pickup truck near cliffs in Point Loma and approached the vehicle. Brians reportedly drove off "at a high rate of speed toward the cliffs" and into the water. Wiese arrived moments after Bautista; both officers ran to the bluffs and spotted the truck on its side.

Wiese said in a video shared by the department, "My first thought was, 'Please tell me the girls aren’t in that truck.'"

Wiese, a K-9 officer, had a 100-foot dog leash in his patrol car, so he worked with other arriving officers and rappelled down the cliffs using the leash to reach the victims. Wiese said he saw Brians in the water holding his two daughters, one of whom "appeared lifeless."

An arriving officers threw a backpack down to Wiese to help get the children up to safety and into an ambulance. The girls were rushed to a nearby hospital. According to KUSI, one of the children had a brain bleed and vertebrae compression fractures. Both survived.

KUSI reports Brians texted the girls' mother about his plans to drive off the Coronado Bridge. He allegedly wrote, "The girls are going to Heaven and I’m going to Hell to wait for you."

Moments before driving off the cliff, he reportedly wrote on Facebook, "Tonight, I’m sending my babies to heaven."

Officer Paige Haar said, "We loaded them up into the ambulance and went with them to the hospital. Luckily, the doctors do what they do. The girls were both OK, which is nothing short of a miracle."

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