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NASCAR goes ahead with re-enactment without Propst

By Mike Fish, CNNSI.com
June 1, 2001
7:12 PM EDT (2312 GMT)

NASCAR investigators have conducted a re-enactment of the crash scene that claimed the life of racing icon Dale Earnhardt, despite the absence of a key witness.

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."