Deegan says her boyfriend were threatened before the race. — NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan released a YouTube video explaining that she skipped the Freedom 500 because she feared for her life and the life of her boyfriend.
Deegan, one of the few female drivers in the sport, said in the video that she missed the race because she saw a post from a man who threatened to kill Chase Cabre, her boyfriend.
“His official words were, not that he’s going to kill Chase, but that he’s going to come ... and be the last thing Chase ever sees,” Deegan says in a 15-minute video entitled “Our Lives Are Being Threatened.”
A few minutes into the video, Deegan, who is a NASCAR Truck Series driver, says that her truck team, David Gilliland Racing, received an eight-page handwritten letter. The writer of the letter claimed he was dating Deegan for multiple months and was in love with her.
“It kind of scared me a little bit, because I’d dealt with stalker situations before,” said Deegan. “I went home that day, looked up the guy’s name on the note, and figured out that he was getting catfished by a fake Hailie Deegan account.”
“Catfishing” is when a person takes information and images from other people online, and either pretends to be that person, or creates a new identity to fool others.
Deegan later said the fake account went on to accuse Cabre of physical abuse and of holding her “hostage.”
“None of that is true,” Deegan says in the video. “But it makes them feel a lot of anger toward Chase. Then this guy gets wrapped up in this whole deal believing Chase beats me.”
Deegan went on to say that the messages became more threatening.
“The messages have progressively gotten worse. When you get tagged in pictures of guns and knives, literally by the hour ... this guy is very persistent on social media ... maybe over 100 times a day.”
After reaching out to the person sending the messages, Deegan and her boyfriend contacted the FBI, filed police reports and alerted NASCAR security.
“I went to the extent of messaging him, literally just trying to break down the situation,” she says. “Dude, you’re getting catfished. This isn’t me, my boyfriend does not beat me. We literally do everything together — I’m on TV all the time. I’m just explaining the whole thing, trying to break it down to him,” Deegan said in the video.
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