La Jolla

A 23-year-old San Diego man was pronounced dead at Scripps Memorial Hospital on Tuesday morning after his car plunged off a 300-foot cliff above Black’s Beach in La Jolla, police said.

Christian Perrin, apparently despondent over a recent break-up with a girlfriend, shot himself in the head before driving off La Jolla Farms Road in the 9300 block about 5:30 a.m., a deputy coroner said.

Perrin’s father had called police a few hours earlier and said he feared that his son was going to kill himself, said Bill Robinson, a police spokesman.

Perrin had called his father from a telephone booth at Torrey Pines Road and La Jolla Shores Drive and said he was upset. When police arrived at the telephone booth, they discovered a note in a sealed envelope.

Police officers were following Perrin when he went off the road.