Tommy Propst, the paramedic who challenged the assertion that Earnhardt's
left lap belt was broken in the accident, refused to participate unless the
demonstration was videotaped. His lawyer, Elizabeth Faiella, told CNNSI.com on
Friday that NASCAR officials had informed her of plans to move forward without
her client.
"It is clear they wanted him to say, 'Maybe I was mistaken,'" said
Faiella, a Winter Park, Fla., attorney. "That is fine if it's done under
fair circumstances. But there's no way I can or could walk in with him, for
instance, and look at the car and say everything is similar [to the accident
scene]. I'm not sure you can re-create that, anyway."
Propst was part of an emergency technician unit, along with Patti Dobler and
his longtime partner, Jason Brown, that rushed down from above turn 4 to aid
Earnhardt after crashing on the final lap of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18. Dobler
crawled into the mangled car through an opposite window, while Propst reached in
through the driver's side window to undo the safety belts.
The other paramedics participated in the re-enactment within the past two
weeks, and Faiella said NASCAR officials had not contacted her with any results
or findings.
NASCAR has repeatedly declined comment on the investigation until its
expected August completion.
Officials first broached the idea of re-creating the scene last month with
the three paramedics and their representatives. In a fax to Feailla, NASCAR
president Mike Helton asked Propst to participate in "an exercise, in which
he and others who first attended to Mr. Earnhardt could show and describe to us
what they recall of the accident with the benefit of a vehicle configured and
equipped the same way as Mr. Earnhardt's."
Propst, an Orange County, Fla., firefighter, has been a public-relations
nightmare for NASCAR, challenging its position on the lap belt and questioning
why investigators waited almost three months to interview him. NASCAR initially
claimed Dobler had a better view of the belts -- which she herself denied --
and, in an effort to challenge Propst's account, said the video footage shows he
was at Earnhardt's car for less than 10 seconds.
The paramedic insists the lap belts were tight when he unbuckled Earnhardt,
not "torn, worn, or frayed apart" as depicted in two photos
investigators showed Propst last month.
Faiella said NASCAR backed out after initially granting her permission to
videotape what she calls the "demonstration," citing the potential to
cause the Earnhardt family additional grief. The attorney acknowledged her
distrust of NASCAR led her to require a video record of any dealings that
involve her client.
"If they want him to change his mind, which I doubt he will, how do we
know the demonstration is accurate?" Faiella said. "And they can come
away and say this is what happened in the demonstration and we have no record of
it ... There's no reason to have a secret demonstration for the benefit of
NASCAR if it's not recorded."