A. A stretch of road where an accident occurs.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. Somewhere in Miami.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 1 (of Season 4), "Living the Dream".

Dexter is sleep-deprived from staying up with the new baby, and as a result, he isn't thinking straight.

After he kills boxer Benny Gomez, we see him heading home. He's driving in his Kia Sportage SUV on a lonely road at night, when he falls asleep at the wheel. His car goes out of control, rolls over, and crashes.

We then see the scene again after Dexter wakes up, as he's being loaded into an ambulance.

Police and paramedics are on the scene.

It is then that Dexter remembers that the dismembered body parts of Benny Gomez are in his car's trunk.

When a fireman says that they've found something, he's certain that they've found Benny, but it turns out to be just a the baby medicine Dexter picked up at the pharmacy on his way home.

They take him to the hospital, tell him he's suffering from a concussion, but he leaves the hospital early and goes looking for the body.

His first stop is the city auto tow yard, where they towed his smashed-up car.  He expects to find the body in the trunk, but it isn't there.

So he returns to the scene of the accident, and we get to see the location during the day. It's a park-like setting, with some large electrical towers visible in the background.

Dexter searches the area, in case the body was thrown from the car during the accident.  It wasn't.

The concussion has left him with holes in his memory of the night before, and he can't remember what he did with the body.


(An earlier scene of Dexter driving, at the very start of this first episode, was also shot in the same general area.)

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. A park road.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This scene was filmed at El Dorado Park in Long Beach, CA.  The official address is 2800 N. Studebaker Road.

But El Dorado is a very large park, so we need to be more specific.

They filmed this roll-over scene on the west side of the park (near the river channel), in the park section north of Spring Street. There's an archery range in that corner of the park, and they shot the scene on the road that runs along the west side of that range, but farther north on that road - where you'll find those big electrical towers.  (See the map link for the specific spot.)

To reach the spot, you need to enter the park through the entrance on the north side of Spring Street, then follow the road west (past the archery range), then north about 800 yards.

[ Warning: the park charges an admission fee when you enter. ]


(While you're there, you can also see the "pit stop" where Dexter & Trinity stopped on their way to Tampa.)


And the park's Nature Center was used for the alligator scene in the first season.



The two photos below were shot by Dexter fan Kerry Weiss, in November 2009.
They show the area in El Dorado park where they filmed the scene of Dexter's car accident.






Kerry Weiss shot the photos below - of the actual filming - in June of 2009.





Here is an aerial photo of the park, with the accident spot marked. And here is a map link.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  In this case, I had a first-person account of the filming.

When fan Kerry Weiss watched the earlier filming of the bathtub murder scenes, she heard them mention that they would be filming a "roll-over" scene soon at the park. Kerry lives next to El Dorado Park, so it was a convenient opportunity to observe another scene being shot.

She shot the photos you see above, and let me know the exact spot where they filmed it.