NASCAR has finished its investigation and says it still doesn’t know who tied a noose that was discovered this past weekend in the garage stall used
NASCAR has finished its investigation and says it still doesn’t know who tied a noose that was discovered this past weekend in the garage stall used by African American stock car driver Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.
NASCAR also released a photo taken on Sunday by its security personnel of what it says was the garage pull rope tied into a noose at a Talladega race in October of 2019, and not reported until last weekend.
In a Thursday conference call with reporters, NASCAR President Steve Phelps said investigators conducted a thorough sweep of all garage areas across the tracks where NASCAR races. That’s 29 tracks and 1,684 garage stalls. 44 of them are at Talladega. Phelps said they found only 11 stalls using a pull down rope tied in a knot. And only one was tied into a noose – the one discovered in Wallace’s garage.
“We further determined,” Phelps said, “the noose was not in place when the October 2019 race weekend began, but was created at some point during that weekend.”
“Given that timing and the garage access policies and procedures at the time, we were unfortunately unable to determine with any certainty who tied this rope in this manner and why it was done.”
“We’d like to have complete resolution here and have all the answers. I know that’s unfulfilling. I wish there’s more we could do but we can’t and so we’ve drawn this matter to a close.”
Phelps acknowledged the investigation’s findings prompt another question – how could [the noose] have gone unnoticed by so many people in October 2019 and this past Sunday morning.
