A car carrying a family of five drove off the fifth-floor ramp of a parking garage Saturday in Yokosuka near Tokyo, leaving three dead and two seriously injured, police said.
The police suspect the driver made some error when parking the vehicle, and while backing up broke through a 1.2-meter-high fence before plunging 13 meters to ground around 12:50 p.m.
The police identified the three people killed as Kazuhiko Nojima, 56, from Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, his wife Akiko, 46, and the man's mother Hiroko, 81. Injured were the couple's two sons — Haruto, 11, and Naoto, whose age was not immediately known.
The garage is for a department store nearby. Nobody on the ground was injured.
A 36-year-old witness said she saw the car falling backward and turning upside down in the air before hitting the ground.
A grocery store worker, 48, said people nearby helped pull the passengers from the wreckage.