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- [Announcer] All right, ladies and gentlemen.
On the count of three,
I want you to tell me who you think's gonna win this race.
Ready? One, two, three!
(crowd yells faintly)
I think they all have a good chance,
but we're gonna find out in 25 lap.
Canandaigua, are you ready?
Wipe the visor, adjust the five-point harness.
Grandpa, take a Viagra pill!
It's time to get it on!
Race fans,
it's showtime!
(trumpet fanfare plays)
(race cars whooshing)
And Stewart's got a head of steam.
He's gonna go to work on the Jeff Cook, number 10.
As Stewart has Kevin Ward Jr.
right there in front of him now.
(quiet piano music)
Oh! And we've got Ward into the wall!
Ward into the wall!
He bounces it over the cushion.
(quiet piano music)
And Kevin Ward's coming out of his car.
He is looking for somebody.
He is looking for...
I believe it was Tony Stewart.
- [Speaker] Red, red, red, red, red, red!
- [Spectator] Oh, he hit him!
Tony Stewart just hit that guy, Alex!
Tony Stewart just hit that guy!
(crowd screams)
(calming guitar music)
(jack clinks)
(motor whirring)
(gravel scrapes)
(twangy country music)
(engine revs)
(race car rumbles)
- [Announcer] ...an issue for Martin Truex Jr.
He immediately said something is wrong.
And now Cole Pearn said, "We have the tires switched."
They messed it up on pit road.
It's the right front and left front
that are switched on the 19-
- [Narrator] In tiny Port Leyden, New York,
the number 13 and Ward Racing
are as familiar at local sprint car tracks
as any of the names of the stock car champions
running on Sunday TV.
(garage door squeaks)
Half the town could grab a Kevin Ward Jr. race trophy
off the garage wall,
and there'd still be plenty left behind.
- [Kevin Sr.] I counted them yesterday.
There's 396 in here.
- [Chris Halsne] 396 trophies?
- Yep.
This is the first year that he raced.
He won 17 out of 19 races.
And then the second year, he won 16 out of 19.
And that's all the trophies up there on the top.
- It was not even an option for him.
It's like, "Well, I'm sticking with racing."
So he like, basically that's what he did.
That's where his love was.
That's where his passion was, racing,
and that's where he did.
Every weekend, they were gone racing.
(child yelling happily)
(motor rumbling)
(announcer speaking indistinctly)
- I guess from as young as, it may sound weird,
but as the young as seven months old,
I knew he, you know, he liked, motors didn't scare him.
You know, some kids, you start a motor around them
and they're gonna run the other way.
Where, you know, he hears a motor,
he'd run to the motor.
(child chatters happily)
Four years old.
We had the dirt track out back,
and I showed him how to drive, or run the go-kart,
and it was a very easy starting go-kart.
I showed him, you know, how to put gas in and stuff,
and he used to go out at eight o'clock in the morning
and ride the go-kart till eight o'clock at night.
(go-kart rattles)
I don't think I ever seen him once ride it across the lawn.
It was always around the track out back.
And he would go, sheesh, I couldn't imagine how many laps
in the 12-hour period around out back.
- I started racing go-karts when I was eight,
and I met Kevin
when I was nine.
We grew up on a farm.
We didn't really have a lot of money to spend on racing.
And Kevin kinda, out of the blue,
just kind of, whether he noticed me or whatever,
he just started helping out,
like just, you know, not long after I met the guy.
And we blew an engine up at the racetrack one night
and he called my Dad and he said,
"I got a gallon of oil for you.
It's gonna cost you $100 bucks,
but you're gonna get a brand new motor with it."
And I said, "Kevin, you don't have to do that."
He said, "I know I don't have to do that,
but I'm gonna do that because I wanna do that
and I can do that."
- My brother and I always had a really close relationship.
You know, like we didn't argue much.
We were six years apart.
So by the time I was older, it was more of a friendship
than it ever really was like a sibling rivalry,
or anything like that.
I used to race, so we had that in common.
I absolutely loved going to watch him race.
One of his go-karts, his play go-kart.
And this is the driver, Kevin Ward.
Number 13.
- [Child] Number 13.
- It's right here, it's 13!
This right here is Kevin Ward's racing go-kart.
When I found out I was having a boy,
then, you know, everything was great.
He was gonna have a nephew,
they were gonna start a Ward Racing Team.
At the time, we actually, when my son about turned one,
we moved down next to my Dad's shop.
So every day, when Kevin would go to work on the race car,
he'd actually come over and grab Landon and take him over
so they could do stuff together all the time.
And that's what I really loved most about him
is how much he did care for his nephew.
You know, he wanted him to be a part
of the whole racing thing.
(door closes)
- Grandpa, guess who just won on the race?
- [Kevin Sr.] Who?
- Kyle Busch.
- [Kevin Sr.] Did he really?
- Yes. - [Kevin Sr.] Oh, boy.
He was 14 years old,
and he was supposed to be 16 to be in this class.
But like I said, I helped, I laid the track down there.
So they let him run the opens there.
- [Chris] And then he ends up beating you.
- Yeah.
(engine revs)
- [Narrator] By the time Kevin Ward Jr. was 17 years old,
he'd racked up 250 wins and six championships in go-karts,
was a two-time micro sprint champion,
and had been named the 360 Sprint Car Rookie of the Year.
He still owns the track record at the Adirondack Speedway
for the fastest lap ever,
13.5 seconds at 135 miles per hour.
- I was always nervous, at every race.
You know, I sat there just like hoping that, you know,
nothing was gonna happen, that he was gonna be okay.
And ultimately, when it came right down to it,
it was his passion for life.
It's what he loved doing.
I wasn't gonna be the one to take that away from him.
(engine revs)
- We live in a small community here.
They know that Kevin lived for racin'.
I'm sure there's a handful of people
that don't agree that Kevin was a great kid, but he was.
He was a hard worker,
had a heart of gold.
Kevin had a lot of things
that a lot of the other kids around here didn't have,
you know, but you'd never know it.
You know, it just, that's what type of kid he was.
- From 10 years old to this day,
I've always looked up to the whole family, you know.
Kevin is such a good man.
His wife is phenomenal.
They've helped a lot of people in the community.
They've helped a lot of people in the racing community.
(contemplative music)
(contemplative music continues)
- [Documentarian] Is this his room?
- [Kevin Sr.] Yes.
Yep.
Pretty much the way it was when he left that morning.
Clothes on the back,
the pile over there.
Yeah, his bed's all made up.
And his mother didn't make it, he made it.
That was house rules and
that's what he done.
- [Documentarian] How hard is it to be in here?
- Really hard.
- [Documentarian] Yeah.
- Yeah, we don't come in here much.
(energetic music)
- [Announcer] Here we go. Final time.
- [Announcer] Big crash behind the race leader,
Tony Stewart!
That's gonna allow Smoke to pull away.
What's gonna happen behind him?
Can Burton get there?
No, he can't!
Tony Stewart wins it at Daytona!
(crowd cheers)
- [Announcer] Tony Stewart wins at Martinsville!
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Tony Stewart wins!
- Tony's a guy with old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants feel.
And I think that's what separated him
from drivers who didn't come up the way he did.
He's a great natural talent to begin with,
and he's a throwback to an earlier generation.
Dan Gurney, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti,
all who took pride in being able to win
in anything with four wheels.
- [Announcer] Yeah, that 14 is just too strong
up off the bottom of the corner.
Jimmie tried everything he could, but 14 is just stout.
- I'm Monte Dutton,
and I wrote as a beat reporter and columnist
about racing for 20 years.
During Tony's rookie season, we sort of hit it off.
And so I decided to write a book about him.
"Rebel with a Cause: A Season with Tony Stewart".
He was personally challenged
and it was,
it was what made him happy
in an otherwise turbulent life.
He did it for fun, you know.
The same way that some people paint,
some people play guitar.
None of them are gonna win Grammys
or have their work hung in the Louvre,
but that's what makes them happy.
- And you won it, and the championship.
What's the emotion right now?
- Oh God, thank the Lord for this one.
- [Narrator] A three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion,
Anthony Tony "Smoke" Stewart
is one of the most successful drivers in history.
He's made around $130 million in prize money.
- [Announcer] Down the back straightaway.
Tony Stewart trying to hang on
and get his very first win ever
at the Track Too Tough to Tame.
- [Narrator] He won NASCAR's Xfinity opening race series
at the Daytona International Speedway seven times.
He's been inducted into nearly
every race car hall of fame imaginable.
- [Announcer] Stewart takes the win at Talladega!
Coming down the front straightaway,
it's gonna be all Tony Stewart!
- [Announcer] They're going down at 11.
Stewart just leans on him,
and keeps leaning and keep leaning.
- [Narrator] His acumen for driving
has occasionally been overshadowed
by his reputation as a hothead.
- (bleep) (bleep)
I don't know what he did to you,
but I know you were mad at him.
(bleep) somebody else, you two right there.
- Hey, shut up!
- Hey! Hey!
(man screams)
(crowd yelling)
- [Narrator] He's publicly punched fans
and competitors alike.
- [Newscaster] The man confronting the fan in the stands
is NASCAR superstar Tony Stewart.
Stewart, who's been assisting the crew
maintain the track all week long,
was being heckled by this man,
Tulsa County Sheriff's Corporal Kyle Hess.
Stewart went to share words with Hess
and the following ensued.
(crowd yelling)
- I always thought with Tony that,
you couldn't prove it with a camera,
but when Tony was in a bad mood,
his eyes looked black as coal to me.
It was like a pall descended over him.
(crowd roars)
He is not one to cool down
and call tomorrow and warm it all over.
Tony is a guy who, if he doesn't like
how you shoved him around on the racetrack,
when he gets outta the car,
he's gonna get this straight right now.
He's just, what's that terrible cliché
that I'm gonna regret ever saying,
"That's just Tony being Tony"?
- [Announcer] And boy, Tony Stewart is after Logano.
- "That's just Shaq being Shaq."
"That's just so and so."
And so it becomes a rationalization for misbehaving.
But, you know, sports is full of clichés.
- [Announcer] This is them coming off of pit road
after they had been warned to settle down.
- [Commentator] When you leave pit road,
you can't go above the yellow line.
- [Interviewer] Well, we're here with Tony.
All right, Tony, your perspective, what happened?
- Ah, the kid's an idiot.
- [Narrator] Stewart might be most famous
for his NASCAR success, played out on asphalt ovals.
But he has always kept one foot on the dirt track,
racing sprint cars.
(engines rev)
He owns a team that has won at least 23 short track titles
in the World of Outlaws.
These sprint cars use big engines
to press speeds past 150 miles per hour,
while sliding inches from the next car
on nearly every turn.
Making it onto this circuit was Kevin Ward Jr.'s dream.
- [Announcer] Kasey Kahne giving a nice push
to Tony Stewart in that outside lane.
- You know, NASCAR's nothing like we do.
NASCAR is obviously the top tier,
and that's where the money's at.
(crowd cheers)
- [Announcer] And the fans are yelling, "Tony!"
- It's definitely a different style of racing.
You know, the NASCAR,
you know, 500 miles, 300 laps.
You know, where we're not.
We're 25 laps. It's a sprint race.
It's, you know.
It could be done in seven minutes.
(engines rev)
You really gotta be on top of your game,
and you're racing, hard,
for those 25 laps.
We're not racing a hundred-lapper,
where you can kind of take your time.
You know, you need to hammer down and go as fast as you can.
So if you fall asleep during this,
then there's something wrong with you.
(upbeat country music)
(fireworks pop)
(motors rattle)
- Sprint cars, they're extremely fast.
The horsepower-to-weight ratio is insane.
And it's probably why guys like Tony Stewart
like the sport so much,
is because they kind of afford you an adrenaline rush
like no other.
- It takes some seat time to get used to it,
to get comfortable enough to feel like you have control
so you can go into that corner, you know,
130, 140 miles an hour,
six inches off the next guy next to you.
Racing with the same group of guys,
you know who you can come into a corner that close to,
and you know who to stay away from, so.
That's another fun part about it, I guess.
- [Narrator] The anatomy of most wing sprint cars
is the same.
They are stripped down to weigh between 1200 and 1400 pounds
and have massive engine power,
between 500 and 900 horsepower, depending on the class.
A 25 square-foot aluminum wing
is mounted above the roll cage.
It creates downforce, sticking the car to the track.
They have no battery, starter, transmission, or clutch.
The right rear tire is notably wider than the rest,
and intentionally low on air pressure,
to get better traction on the banked track corners.
(engine rumbles)
- It would be, probably,
one of the quickest accelerating vehicles in racing
that you could possibly ride in,
in terms of going around corners.
So they have a huge amount of horsepower
and very, very little weight.
- This sport, it's the highs are so high.
I don't know if you could take drugs to make you that happy.
It's just something that propels you so high,
it puts you on a pedestal, you know.
People kinda like look up to you a little bit.
But then the lows are so low,
that it just, it's a rollercoaster.
(engines revving)
I understand why my father
didn't want me to get in the sport,
because one week you're on top of the world,
next week, you're literally at the bottom, you know.
And then you gotta drag yourself out
and work on the car harder, come back, and be better.
- I think you see guys come back.
I mean, that's their grassroots,
that's what got 'em into the big leagues
making the big money.
And I believe at the end of the day,
I would say
the majority of them guys
would love nothing more to race the dirt.
You know, NASCAR is near and dear to 'em
because of the fortune, the fame, the money,
the lifestyle that they, you know, are capable of living.
But I think at the end of the day,
if they could make as much money racing on the dirt
as they could on the blacktop, they would, you know,
I think a lot of 'em would switch back to the dirt.
- Tony yearned for simpler times at the dirt track,
when he was hanging out with his pals
and people would leave him alone.
And
he
probably loved that
more than
winning the biggest race of his career,
which undoubtedly was the Brickyard.
- [Announcer] Tony Stewart, a native Hoosier.
His dream comes true!
Tony Stewart wins the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard!
- [Narrator] The Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
home to the Brickyard 400,
and Canandaigua's Motorsports Park
in Ontario County, New York,
are worlds apart.
At the Brickyard in 2005,
Tony Stewart raced 160 laps on a 2 1/2 mile asphalt track
in front of more than a quarter million fans.
(crowd cheers)
- [Announcer] That's his suite,
outside of turn two, here comes Smoke.
- [Narrator] His winning prize was around $554,000.
(crowd cheers)
- [Crowd] You're the man! Tony!
(crowd cheers)
- [Narrator] When he entered a sprint car race
at Canandaigua's half-mile track in 2014,
just a few thousand fans filled the front stretch stands.
The winner was slated to take home $1500.
- You know, why he was there that night racing for $1500?
I don't have an answer.
But,
I do know how aggressive he is
to race like that.
The year before, almost to date,
he caused the accident
that the girl ended up with a broken back.
(race cars buzzing)
(crowd yelling)
15 cars got involved, ours was one of 'em.
It broke, ruined our chassis, and got bent up
over him doing some stupid move in the front
that shoulda never happened.
It was the second, third lap of the race, you know,
and he's making moves that,
the weekly guys that we race against
would never have done it.
- The people love the sprint cars.
They're flipping, they're crashing,
they're, you know, wrecking equipment,
and that's all part of it.
You know, we don't like crashing,
we don't like flipping and destroying race cars.
It costs a lot of money.
But,
at the same time,
I think it's a lot of fun to put a show on for the fans.
(rhythmic upbeat music)
(crowd cheers)
- Everybody's happy at the racetrack, for the most part.
You know, you have bad nights,
but you look at the fans and everybody's smiling
and laughing and cheering and waving,
and that's the fun part of it.
The kids, to me, to see the little kids out there
and you know, trying to walk up to the fence
and waving to us and stuff.
That's, I get a kick out of that.
(motors rev)
(wistful music)
- [Reporter] Witnesses at the Canandaigua Motorsports Park
say the crash was like a scene from a horror movie.
Around 10:30 Saturday night,
NASCAR champion Tony Stewart collided with and killed
20 year-old competitor, Kevin Ward Jr.
- It's kind of all a blur at this point,
but something that I'll never forget
is Kevin, you know, going through the air,
limp, you know, and just,
I've never seen that before, you know,
and I hope I never see it again, but it just.
Didn't look like a person, you know?
It's almost like you take a fire suit
and throw it up in the air.
- He got out of his car.
He ran out in the middle of the track.
He pointed at Tony.
Tony took one more lap around
and he stood right there in front of the car
and Tony never stopped.
And that's all she wrote.
- He was really excited.
I mean, I could see,
like when I arrived at the track that night,
like I could see like the joy in him.
Like I could tell he was just so happy
that his car was running, it was hooked, you know,
it was doing exactly what he wanted it to do.
Like, he knew he had a good chance to do really well.
- And then to see Tony pull up that night,
that was a big deal, you know?
Because we just broke into this division
and now we're gonna be racing against him.
And then to be running, you know,
I shouldn't say door-to-door,
because he was definitely
a little bit better than we were that night,
you know, it was kind of a big deal for us
to try to keep up and try to learn,
especially from a veteran driver,
on lines and where to run.
- Kayla was there with their little,
with my grandson there, Landon.
And Kevin's still working on his car.
Landon, he was always involved,
you know, working on the car too.
I mean, he was only four years old,
but he was interested in it,
and had wrenches in his hand all the time.
- I remember he was standing in the trailer.
I think he was probably texting his girlfriend really quick.
And I told him, "I'm gonna go up in the stands now."
"Good luck, bud," you know.
And he just looked at me and he says, "Thanks, Mama."
And I went up to the stands.
Kevin pushed him out.
And I remember right before he went on the track,
he told me that, you know,
the last thing he said to Kevin was,
"It's gonna be a good night tonight, Pa."
I mean I just think that just goes to show
how much he really wanted to win this race.
- [Announcer] Everybody falls in line
where they need to be behind the pace truck.
And the next time by,
we will turn them loose with the green.
- And it come across the radio, you know,
"Drivers get ready for the A main,"
'cause weather's moving in.
- [Announcer] And Tommy Wickham in row two.
Darryl Ruggles and Kevin Ward in row three.
Jessica Zemken and Cory Sparks in row four.
Jeff Cook and Steve Poirier in row five.
Scott Kreutter and Tony Stewart in row number six.
- I was up in the grandstands with my family and everything,
and it was something I always did on a regular basis.
Like if Kevin spun out,
or if I thought there was any chance
that he could have gotten hurt or anything like that,
I always go down and check on him.
(motors rumbling)
- Well, the accident happened on lap 13.
- [Newscaster] Stewart's number 14 car
seems to make contact with Kevin Ward Jr.'s 13 car,
which you see hits the wall and spins out. Now-
- When you're a big star
and you go to a place like Canandaigua,
you always have
sort of the
situation like the fastest gun in the West,
where you have these local guys who are like,
"I don't care who he is, he's not running over me."
- [Announcer] Into turn number one.
Tries to slow the slider.
Oh! And we've got Ward into the wall!
Ward into the wall!
He bounces it over the cushion,
and off the wall into turn number one.
We are under caution.
- The weekly racers know how each one, each driver races.
And they know Kevin's a, you know,
hammer down, up on the top.
When you slide him, you'd better give him some room,
or you're gonna make contact with him.
Well, Tony, not being a weekly racer with him,
just slid him so close, you know,
actually clipped him, the front end.
- A slide job is on a dirt track.
When you go in the turn,
you're low in the turn,
and you get more traction and fly outta the turn
and slide across in front of the car you're racing against.
In other words, for a lot of times, there's two grooves.
There's one guy low, one guy high.
They start to surge ahead,
then the guy on the outside has more RPMs
and he goes back by.
A slide job is when that guy on the bottom
goes extra hard into the turn,
and slides up the higher groove
and that's the way he makes the pass.
- [Announcer] And Kevin Ward's coming out of his car.
He is looking for somebody.
- That's not abnormal.
Usually you get out and you take your steering wheel
and you chuck it at the other car,
or you run out there and you wave 'em down
and flip 'em the bird, or you know.
Obviously, when you end up in the wall, you know,
you're not happy, you know.
And everybody has a right to be,
there's a lot of money on the line,
and a lot of pride, a lot of ego.
- Look, it is part of the ethic of racing.
There's no doubt about it.
And you're right, Tony Stewart, regardless of this incident,
separate from this incident,
has made a career, in some ways,
of having a hotheaded personality.
Fans love him for it.
It is part of the reason he has made so much money.
You gotta take a look at this.
This is from a few years ago, an incident with Matt Kenseth.
He and Tony Stewart get tangled up.
Stewart feels that Kenseth
knocked him out of a winning position in the race.
And what does he do?
He walks onto the track, in front of a car, basically,
and throws his helmet at Kenseth.
You tell me how close this is.
- You know, we know
that it wasn't a smart decision that Kevin made
to get out on the track,
to get out of his car.
We acknowledge that, we know that.
But I strongly feel like
that shouldn't have cost him his life, either.
(foreboding music)
- [Announcer] And Kevin Ward's coming out of his car.
He is looking for somebody.
He is looking for,
I believe it was Tony Stewart.
- [Spectator] Oh, my God!
- [Speaker] Red, red, red, red, red, red!
(dramatic music)
- When Tony did a slide job,
and I see him spin and hit the wall,
I immediately started down the stands.
I wanted to go see him.
Meantime, while I was going down the stands,
that other lap occurred.
And that's when he got hit.
- Seeing Kevin get out of his car,
seeing him, you know, he was coming down the track,
I thought he was actually coming to my car.
Me and Kevin have,
I might have ran him outta room in that race.
So I thought he might have been mad at me.
Came at my car.
I gassed it, swerved away from him, and said to myself,
that next guy in line was probably gonna hit him.
- I saw him come down the track to,
I believe to yell at Tony Stewart
for the little fender-bender they got into,
which
unfortunately,
was common.
We couldn't get to him in time.
Usually if we can get to 'em in time,
we can put a car in the way, you know?
(somber piano music)
- There was this big cop in front of me.
He was big and you know, muscles.
I just wanted to get by him so bad.
I just wanted to go over there, and you know,
I remember like begging him and pleading with him,
"Please let me over there."
Like, "I need to be with my son right now."
It never happened, they never let me go over there.
Five minutes went by, 10 minutes went by.
15, 20 minutes went by, and they were still doing CPR.
I'm a nurse, so I kinda knew that it wasn't good.
- Once the ambulance got there,
we ended up putting 'em in the ambulance.
I was in the back of the ambulance doing CPR
all the way to Thompson Hospital.
- [Interviewer] And when you got to Thompson Hospital,
did the healthcare professionals take over?
- They took over.
As soon as we backed up and opened the doors, they came in.
Well, we got 'em out and I was doing CPR.
One of their nurses continued CPR
all the way into, the rest of the way into the hospital.
- Operator of the car that was struck
was transported to Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua
by ambulance.
At the hospital, the operator was pronounced
dead on arrival.
- Seeing it with your two eyes,
and people are coming up to you that night and going,
"Kevin's not with us anymore."
"Kevin's dead," you know.
And just saying, "No, he's not."
"No, there's no way."
- I,
just felt like I,
like the only thing I could do was pray.
Like, I needed more help, I needed to pray.
Like I just, I knew it was bad.
I knew it wasn't good.
I went out to one of the nurses at the desk there,
and I asked her like, "Do you guys have a chapel somewhere?
Do you have somewhere that I can go?
Like, I need to say a few prayers.
Is there a chapel here in the hospital?"
And she looked at me and she says,
"I think you should go back in the waiting room,
because the doctor's gonna be coming in to talk to you."
So at that point I knew he was gone.
- As far as affecting the local, you know,
the local community,
everybody
took it pretty hard.
Sorry.
(clears throat)
It still,
it still
hurts.
(quiet piano music)
(go-kart sputters)
- I hate that my brother's not there.
That wasn't our plan.
He was supposed to be,
it was the Ward Racing Team, with Papa,
and you know, Uncle Kevin, and my son and my other nephew,
you know, they were going to be a team.
And that team's not complete anymore.
- I hate the fact that my son's death
is on the internet for everybody
to see,
over and over and over again.
And that was really hard for us to accept.
- [Spectator] Tony Stewart just hit that guy, Alex!
Tony Stewart just hit that guy!
- This is something that will definitely
affect my life forever.
This is a sadness and a pain
that I hope no one ever has to experience in their life.
That being said,
I know that the pain and the mourning
that Kevin Ward's family and friends are experiencing
is something that I can't possibly imagine.
I want Kevin's father, Kevin Sr.,
and his mother, Pam,
and his sisters, Christi and Kayla and Katelyn,
to know that every day I'm thinking about 'em
and praying for them.
- He never,
never came over to any of us that night,
never came to the hospital,
never to ask how we were doing.
Never contacted-
- He never showed any concern for us.
Like there was, there was no concern for us whatsoever.
Like, he never checked on Kevin that night.
He never checked afterwards to see, like, how we were doing.
He never...
It's like we weren't even a thought of his.
Like, I don't understand.
I don't know how I can forgive somebody
when he seems to have no remorse.
- [Court Official] Do you swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you, God?
- Yes. - [Court Official] Thank you.
- [Interviewer] State your name, sir.
- Anthony Wayne Stewart.
- [Interviewer] Mr. Stewart,
do you believe that a operator of a motor vehicle
should not steer that motor vehicle toward a pedestrian?
- Absolutely.
(tense music)
- [Interviewer] At any point from when
you first saw Mr. Ward's car,
well, at any point after that,
did you apply the throttle to your car?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] When did you do that?
- (sighs) In-between the time,
the first time I saw him
to after Chuck Hebing went past him
and I realized he was running down the racetrack
toward me.
- [Interviewer] Okay.
For what purpose did you apply throttle to your car?
- [Tony] To try to drive the car down to the left,
to get away from him.
- [Interviewer] And was that immediately prior to the impact
between him and your car?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] And if you apply throttle in that situation
and steer to the left,
isn't the back of your car gonna slide to the right?
- It did in that scenario, yes.
- [Interviewer] But that's the typical way it's gonna move.
- Not necessarily.
- [Interviewer] What other way would it move?
- [Tony] I mean, depending on the track conditions,
if the track's really sticky, it wouldn't,
it may not move at all.
- I was behind him, right directly behind him
going into turn one and two,
and they were telling us to stay low,
and I started to come down a little bit,
and I could see Tony's left front wheel turn to the right,
closer in the direction of where Kevin was,
up higher onto the race track.
And then I could see,
I was on the, just underneath him
and I could look up and see,
I could see Kevin still there in front of his car
and with his hands in the air.
And
I saw the rear of the car stand up
and the dust come off the rear tires
as Tony hit the throttle.
- [Interviewer] And then?
- And then when he hit the throttle,
the rear of the car came around,
and the front end of the car went to the left,
the car got sideways.
And he struck Kevin.
- And as I believe he saw
Ward pointing at him,
he started to drift up the track towards him.
And then Ward was moving his feet quick (fingers tap)
and,
like stutter-stepping,
as Stewart was coming at him.
And then Stewart hit the gas,
the car turned sideways, and I didn't see Ward anymore.
- [Interviewer] What makes you comfortable saying
that you think Mr. Stewart hit the gas?
- You could hear the car rev.
- [Interviewer] And did you,
do you feel comfortable that you can associate that rev
with Mr. Stewart's car?
- Yes.
- I saw Tony's car
go up,
and then he gassed it and came back down,
and he collected Kevin into his rear tire.
And then he was thrown approximately 70 feet.
- I mean, we said from day one
that it looked like he had moved up the track
and obviously hit the throttle.
And I know them cars,
what they do when you hit the throttle,
you know, it fishtails out the back end to the right.
So, you know, we're like, "Why'd he hit the throttle?"
- Tony's car, there whether, yeah,
I don't know what he was doing.
You know, I'm not in his head.
All I know is that
the rear tires lifted right up,
blew up big and skinny
and the dust rolled off of 'em.
And next thing you know,
Kevin's flying through the air.
I don't know,
I don't know if he was driving straight at him.
I don't know if he was getting on the throttle
to try to miss him
and try to get down to the bottom of the racetrack.
I don't know.
There's a split second there that I can't see.
- [Interviewer] You saw Mr. Ward struck,
and then did you ever see him move again?
- No, I saw him,
I saw Tony make impact
and strike Kevin
and I saw Kevin going through the air
and I immediately turned onto the left.
I tried to look and,
no.
- It's inconceivable for me to believe
that Tony Stewart intentionally hurt another driver.
But it is not inconceivable for me to believe
that Tony felt like he was protecting his turf.
You may have said, "I'll fix his young ass,"
but you've done it 1,000 times and no one's got hurt.
And there is a tragedy,
there is a comedy of errors that takes place.
But I'm positive that Tony didn't try to kill somebody.
I think that he tried to say,
"I'm Tony Stewart, you don't mess with me."
But I think it was probably
something that had happened 1,000 times
and nothing bad ever happened.
(haunting music)
- But again, I want to please emphasize
and make it clear that at this very moment,
there are no facts in hand
that would substantiate or support a criminal charge
or indicate criminal intent on the part of any individual.
(suspenseful music)
(staccato music)
(staccato music continues)
- [Interviewer] Would you state your name please, sir?
- My name is John C. Abraham.
I'm an investigator
for the Ontario County Sheriff's Department.
- [Interviewer] Let me let you look at
what we've marked as Exhibit 13.
Do you recognize that? - Yep.
- [Interviewer] And what is it?
- That's a statement I took from Mr. Stewart
on
August 9th, 2014.
I started typing at 11:49 p.m.
- [Interviewer] And was that a recorded statement
that was later transcribed, or were you-
- No, it was, I typed it.
(keyboard clicking)
- He says,
"We came around turn two under caution,
because the driver that stepped out of his car had crashed.
When I came around turn two, there was Chuck,
he was in the car in front of me,
and the driver was running down the racetrack
and almost ran into Chuck's car.
And when Chuck went by, he was running at me
because he was upset
that I was the car next to him when he crashed.
And he stepped right in front of the car and I swerved,
and then I felt my right rear tire make contact with him."
What are your thoughts on that first statement?
- That was his first story.
He seen Kevin walking toward the 45.
He seen him walking toward his car.
So that was the first story.
Well, the last story was
that he lost track of him or whatever,
but I mean, that was the original story there, so.
- Mr. Stewart said that he attempted to swerve
and that he felt the right rear tire
impact Mr. Ward.
- [Interviewer] That's the general substance
of your first conversation with Mr. Stewart that night?
- That's the only conversation I had.
- [Interviewer] Oh, I misheard you.
I thought I heard you say you talked to him more than once.
- Nope, that was the only time.
(high-pitched music)
- [Narrator] Tony Stewart's nine-question conversation
with police officers
is written up in less than half a page.
After the first answer,
Stewart spoke a total of 57 words and the interview ended.
- [Interviewer] Going out to investigate that evening,
did you follow super sprint racing?
- I did not, I still don't.
I did not know any, I mean,
I don't follow sprint racing at all.
Like I said, it's actually the first time
I've ever had to go to the race track for an incident,
you know, since, in 27 years.
- [Interviewer] Have you ever done an investigation
of any sort of race car or crash?
- No, I have not.
- [Interviewer] Prior to this one, I guess I should say.
Is that fair?
- [Deputy Rago] That's correct.
- [Interviewer] So what's typed up on exhibit 13
is what Mr. Stewart said to you that night, is that correct?
- [Investigator] Correct.
- [Interviewer] He didn't say anything to you,
about, for instance,
what his position was on the track prior to the collision.
Is that fair? - [Investigator] That's fair.
- [Interviewer] He did not say anything to you
about whether he applied the throttle to his vehicle
at any point prior to the crash?
- No, he did not.
- I don't know that they asked the right questions
on the night of the accident.
They had heard what happened.
They had heard that Kevin Ward
stepped in front of Tony Stewart's car.
They're gonna think, you know,
"Blame is on Kevin Ward.
Tony Stewart was just a hapless victim in all this.
And you know, he's probably a little bit upset about it,
and we're gonna go easy on him."
- "Oh, he just stepped in the front of my car."
Was that true or not? Okay.
They have no basis to say is that really what did happen.
But just general appearance is, you know,
"Car is going here and the guy is hit by the car,
so he must step into the car."
That's what their reasoning was.
They have no base or science or anything like that.
- [Interviewer] When you had a chance
to meet with Mr. Stewart that evening, August 9,
did you have the impression
that he was aware of what had occurred on the track?
- [Investigator] Absolutely.
- [Interviewer] Did he show any signs or symptoms
of any kind of impairment to you?
- No, I actually even asked him as well.
I didn't smell it, I didn't sense anything.
He was just very upset, very distraught.
- I most definitely think they should have tested him.
They tested my son.
My son didn't have an option whether he got tested or not.
Why shouldn't have Tony have been tested?
If there's a fatality, you just do it.
They basically asked Tony, you know,
"Did you have any alcohol?
Did you ever do any drugs tonight?"
or something like that.
"Nope? Okay."
That was good enough for them.
- We're looking at clothing, we're looking at lighting,
we're looking for eyewitnesses that were working.
We're looking for any information now
that will assist us in this investigation.
Again, it's less than 16 hours old.
It's ongoing.
- [Reporter] Are you looking into the possibility
that Stewart may have swerved at the last minute,
deliberately, waiting until the last minute
to get out of the way?
- This is an ongoing investigation
and we are looking at any information
that's relevant to the crash.
- We got the sense that night that,
like something wasn't right,
just the way that Sheriff Povero was talking to us
and how he didn't want to answer
some of my questions that I had for him.
And when I'd ask him direct questions about the case
and what they were gonna do and stuff, like,
he literally just like turned away from me
and like wouldn't even look me in the eye anymore.
And I thought that was so strange.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music continues)
- New tonight at 10, the grand jury
that will determine if NASCAR's Tony Stewart
will face charges for killing another driver
met for the first time today.
- Yes, the charges that
were submitted to the grand jury for consideration
were manslaughter in the second degree
and criminally negligent homicide.
- Drivers are trying to stay focused on what's ahead,
but they say the prosecutor's pursuit
to be sure it was all an accident is a setback.
- He's going through the dickens
since the whole thing happened,
and now his fate is in the hands of a jury.
That's a pretty tough deal.
- I mean, I've been in a court for,
you know, speeding tickets, (laughs) you know?
But,
I didn't know what to expect.
I've never even been to that courthouse.
Then you walk in,
and there's all your fellow racers, there are a bunch there,
you know, you got five or six of us that are there.
They all have lawyers.
- [Documentarian] But you didn't feel like
you needed one?
- I didn't think I needed one until I walked in the door
and everybody else was lawyered up.
Then I said, "Well, maybe I shoulda had somebody."
- What cost him his life was the actions of Tony Stewart.
Him moving up the track,
when he was being told to stay low and slow on the track,
accelerating under a caution,
sliding his car sideways,
(indistinct) his tires.
You know, those are the actions that took my son's life.
- The difficult part is if it was a road accident,
you know, everybody in the jury understands.
They either drive or they have a car
or they've been in a car.
(dramatic music)
The people there have, I'd probably put money on it,
never been to a race, you know,
never been around a race car.
They just don't understand.
They didn't have a breakdown.
They didn't even have a car there to say,
"This is what a car looks like.
And this is, you know, this is stagger,
this tire's bigger than this tire.
And this is where the throttle is,
this is where the brake pedal is.
This motor has 700 horse, you know,
on a car that weighs 1400 pounds."
It's difficult to explain to somebody
that doesn't have a clue.
- Well, the videos actually did not demonstrate any
aberrational driving by Tony Stewart
until the point of impact with Kevin Ward,
at which point his vehicle veered to the right up the track,
as a result of the collision.
Prior to that, his course was pretty straight.
(motor revs)
- Some of our lawyers told us, like,
"Proof is in the video.
Like, just let them do their job.
All they have to do is watch the video.
They can see what happened.
Like, don't hound them, you know,
don't bother them all the time,
just let them do your job,
you're gonna be good.
Just let 'em go ahead and just do the video."
One of my biggest regrets yet.
- [Interviewer] If you assume he did not move to the right,
but continued on the line he was on,
do you think he would've missed Mr. Ward?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] Can you think of any good reason
why Mr. Stewart would've turned his tires to the right?
- No.
- [Interviewer] Do you think it's common knowledge
among sprint racers
that if you
are moving at caution speeds
and apply throttle,
that it's gonna cause the rear right,
the rear of your car
to slide out to the right?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] Can you think of a good reason
why Mr. Stewart would've applied throttle
right before the impact with Mr. Ward?
- No.
- After listening to and questioning all of the witnesses
and reviewing all of the evidence,
the grand jury has determined that there is no basis
to charge Tony Stewart with any crimes.
His case was, therefore, no billed by the grand jury.
(gentle music)
- [Speaker] A grand jury in Ontario County, New York,
has decided there is no basis for any criminal charges
relating to Tony Stewart's role
in the August 9th death of Kevin Ward Jr.
during a sprint car race.
The grand jury had met Tuesday
to hear evidence from District Attorney Michael Tantillo,
and quickly determined charges would not be necessary.
Stewart being cleared of any wrongdoing
is a tremendous boost for the NASCAR community,
where Stewart has many supporters among drivers,
crew members, and their families.
- I mean, our son is gone.
We're never gonna see our son again.
And nobody has,
Tony has not been held accountable for that at all.
Not being charged with anything,
not spending one day in jail,
which I feel he should be in jail right now.
I have to live with that every day.
And that is so hard
to think that my son's death has gone unaccountable.
We've gotten no justice for our son.
- Most people, they lose a family member,
and you know, they go through the calling hours,
they go through a funeral, they put 'em in the ground,
and then, you know, you can start healing
and you start moving on.
I feel like my family was never given that.
- Maureen, startling revelations today.
Victim Kevin Ward Jr. was high on marijuana
the night he stepped out of his race car on a live track
and was struck and killed by Tony Stewart.
- There is toxicology evidence in the case
relating to Kevin Ward
that actually indicated that at the time of operation,
he was under the influence of marijuana.
- I'm not surprised.
I mean, young kid, high on marijuana.
Famous, famous person gets off, you know.
Did they do a blood test on Stewart, too?
- [Newscaster] Stewart was not tested.
A drug expert interviewed Stewart the night of the crash
and determined he was not under the influence
of drugs or alcohol.
- I don't think it made any difference, at all.
But it comes off as,
"Well, he was high and that's why he got outta the car."
No, he got outta the car cause he was pissed off.
You know.
It had nothing to do with it.
- When they seen the fact that Kevin had THC in his system,
that was their ticket.
It was Tony's ticket to freedom.
Like, that was the means, what they needed to use
to give them justification
or a motive to be able to clear Tony.
- [Narrator] That THC was present
during his postmortem autopsy lab work is indisputable.
But the questions that cannot be answered by science
are whether Kevin Ward Jr.
was impaired by his marijuana use,
and how long it had been since he last used the drug.
- No way.
No way did he have, had been smoking marijuana.
I'm saying, well, Friday morning we left to go to Canada,
you know, eight o'clock in the morning.
So,
I have no idea when he'd had to smoke
the five hours before he got in that car.
There's no way possible.
- All right, my name's Michael Holland.
I'm a medical toxicologist
and occupational medicine physician.
I do a lot of investigations for
forensic toxicology is one of my special interests,
and postmortem is,
most of forensic toxicology is postmortem toxicology.
The carboxy THC, the one that's 78,
that's an inactive metabolite.
That can be 2,000 and not impairing.
It's not an impairing drug.
Well, you know, a living person at 13.1
would exhibit all these different impairment things,
and you would see all these different things.
You can't say that from a postmortem central blood specimen.
You just can't.
You know, and from aortic blood, I can almost guarantee you
that that's not what his antemortem blood level was.
Almost assuredly it would be less,
because that's a long postmortem interval
and it's from central blood,
and we know it exhibits postmortem redistribution.
- The levels that were determined
were enough to impair judgment, yes.
- [Announcer] The 28, going after Kevin Ward's number 13
off the turn,
as Ward able to keep the position,
as Ward trying to reel in
the Paul Kinney number 19K, as Jason Barney-
- It's hard for me to imagine
someone who's acutely high on marijuana
to be able to, A, negotiate that kind of a scenario,
and drive that fast and safely do it;
and B, even making that decision
that it would be safe to do that.
You know, "I'm gonna go get high."
- [Announcer] The 13 of Kevin Ward
holding on to position number six, Jeff Cook is seventh.
- Those levels in your system
consistently continue to rise after someone passes.
So the fact that Kevin might have had THC in his system,
the fact that it could have been, you know,
a low level where it wouldn't have showed impairment,
or, I'm not even sure what they would consider impairment,
but they waited 39 hours to test his blood for that?
- And then we were told it's a matter of how the body's laid
and where they draw the blood from.
- [Chris Halsne] You don't think justice has been served?
- Not at all.
Not at all.
I ask myself, "Why?" every day.
I do, I mean is it just because it's who he is?
I mean, why didn't they charge him with one single thing?
- And that was the reason the civil suit come about.
You know, civil suits are about money.
We told 'em from day one,
we don't want 10 cents of Tony Stewart's money.
We don't need 10 cents of Tony Stewart's money.
We just wanted answers to what happened,
and you know,
it may sound mean, but,
put him through some of what we went through, you know.
(quiet music)
(tense music)
- Right now, in the last 30 minutes,
we've learned that NASCAR driver Tony Stewart
is being sued by the family of Kevin Ward Jr.
for a deadly 2014 dirt track accident.
(serious music)
- I am Richard Ziernicki.
I am President and CEO of Knott Laboratory,
consulting engineering firm in Denver, Colorado.
I have been doing this type of work about 35 years.
That means this investigation of motor vehicle accidents
and industrial accidents.
- The beauty of solving this project with videogrammetry
is that we get to change our perspective.
We get to see this accident from a different vantage point.
We actually have the video.
- [Colleague] It's layer one.
- As layer one, yes.
This is our video.
So if you were to watch the video,
you're gonna see it's all over the place.
And we have to be able to calibrate
and analyze this video footage for each video frame,
because it's such a rapid succession of changing
video and camera properties.
And we need to be able to solve
for all those multiple different vantage points.
- There's nothing more than just series of images.
All the camera we deal with,
currently they are about 30 frames per second.
Those are a series of images,
still images, okay?
So the video, what you see,
we fooling your eye by telling you something is moving.
Nothing is moving.
Series of videos.
Your eye take this as a motion,
but there is no motion actual on those images.
And to run the program, it took like four or five minutes.
Now it takes a couple seconds.
Boom, done. The same.
So speed of the computers change so dramatically.
- Every new case is a new challenge,
and it's like putting a puzzle together.
So that's why I enjoy it.
There were
spectators
filming this.
There was a track camera filming this.
There were GoPro cameras, or the like,
in at least several of the vehicles on the track.
So this was all being recorded,
and,
once it happened,
it helped to untangle the videos,
helped untangle what actually occurred.
- The reason we are hired,
because there was no definite answer
what really happened on scientific level.
We have deposition, we have statement, we have video.
But the video,
you can look on the video all your life
and you cannot comprehend the depth of the video,
where the things are in relation,
depth in the video.
Because the nature of human eye,
we don't have ability to read depth on a video.
How far they are apart.
Are they two inches apart or five inches apart?
Your body, your brain, your eye cannot figure out that.
We need to digest that from that video.
And in combining this with the 3D scanning,
now we can do that.
- In this case, I think we had
hundreds of millions of data points based on our laser scan.
We understand exactly where these points in space are,
and then when we have a vehicle moving through that space,
we know what its vehicle dynamics are,
we know where its position in space is,
and we can quite accurately tell
exactly the location of the vehicle and how it's behaving.
- And that's the beauty of physics, right?
You can break the laws of man,
but you can't break the laws of physics.
Okay.
And,
by golly,
Tony Stewart stepped on his throttle.
When he applied throttle,
the car rotated and kicked the right end,
okay, so the passenger side rear of the car out.
And what that did
is it kicked it right into where Kevin Ward was standing.
And the right rear wheel,
just, it's very gummy,
it's like, sort of like a spongy-type material.
It probably just, you know, sucked Kevin Ward right into it.
And that was, unfortunately, the end for Kevin Ward.
- Each frame we can figure out
acceleration or deceleration of the vehicle.
And we did.
And each frame we can figure out
your angle or fishtailing of the vehicle,
and quantify that, how many degree.
Not just roughly left or right.
No, specifically.
That was the beauty of that analysis.
It's not the guess work, it's not the judgment.
There is not no judgment whatsoever.
It is what that video shows.
We found not what he did, but we found what the car did.
Okay? Difference, huge difference.
And we can potentially extrapolate that
because the car didn't do anything
unless you step on the gas, right?
So if you step on the gas, the car will respond.
But we analyzed not the human behavior,
we analyzed the car response.
But the car responded to human action,
human
applying steering angle, applying this, applying that.
So the car did accelerate.
There is no base or reason for car to accelerate
unless you step on the gas.
So yes, driver forced that car to accelerate.
- We tracked every single race car that we could
that went by Kevin Ward prior to impact,
so that we could see what their path was,
see what their speeds were,
how were they reacting to this hazard
that was in the racetrack.
And what we found is that these other cars
were, in fact, following caution procedures
of staying low on the track,
and they were avoiding the area where Kevin Ward was.
In the video that you will see,
there are paths that demonstrate
the paths of each of those vehicles
that went by Kevin Ward prior to the accident.
Kevin Ward never stepped
beyond the path of those six vehicles.
He never got in their way, so to speak.
So,
it isn't until Tony Stewart comes by,
you see all these six paths, right?
And then Tony Stewart makes a diagonal line
straight through those other paths,
in the direction of Kevin Ward.
- [Documentarian] When you just look,
again, I'm talkin' YouTube,
you're just eyeballing this thing,
it looks like Mr. Ward is moving down the track
and he kind of steps into Tony Stewart's path.
You found that didn't,
that isn't true.
- That's not true.
So again, based on the videos,
and based on the videogrammetry,
Kevin Ward did come down the track
from the location that his car was at,
but he stopped at a certain line.
He didn't come very close to the previous six cars,
low on the track.
He didn't walk all the way down the track.
He stayed relatively high, okay.
And he wasn't coming down into the path of Tony Stewart.
Again, should Kevin Ward have been out of his car?
No, he should not have.
But, after he got out of his car, okay,
he stayed rather high in the track.
And if it weren't for Tony Stewart,
this incident wouldn't have occurred.
- He stopped, and his upper body
moved away from Tony Stewart.
He did not make a move into the vehicle.
He kept walking, then he stood
for a split second before impact
and upper body, not leg, upper body move away from car
when he was hit.
- It's not until he accelerates and hits the throttle
that his vehicle would, you know, act accordingly.
You know, if you're gonna hit the throttle
in a lightweight, high-horsepower vehicle,
it's gonna kick the rear end out
and it's gonna throw up dirt
and it's gonna do all the things that a car would do
if you're gonna stone a competitor.
But when you're doing that type of maneuver,
the vehicle's also gonna have a tendency to drift.
And
the drifting
would actually cause the vehicle to go up the track.
- I don't believe Tony Stewart was truthful
in answering why he applied his throttle.
(somber music)
- Well,
it happens in racing,
but normally people don't get killed.
And
I do think
that it's absurd
to think that it was,
that it was intentional.
I mean,
it would be no more, say,
uncommon than say,
a horse-collar tackle in football,
or a beanball in baseball,
or a grabbing the face mask, you know?
I mean, it's something, it's sort of a, I mean.
There's an implication in the word stoning
that sounds more sinister than it is, you know.
- [Interviewer] "He left his lane and hit the gas
and to me it just like, it looks like it was intentional."
Do you want to modify that sentence?
- Well, I don't know if I would put intentional there again,
not knowing how those turn.
And one of the things that we've seen in the past
at Canandaigua Motor Speedway
is they like to throw dirt in people's face.
All right?
That's intentional.
Hitting somebody, maybe not so intentional.
I don't know.
But I've seen people throw dirt in other people's faces.
- [Interviewer] That seems like a bad idea to do that.
- Very bad idea.
Bad idea getting out of the car,
bad idea doing that as well.
Two wrongs don't ever make a right.
- We've maintained this from day one.
We don't think Tony
intentionally meant to hit and kill Kevin.
- No, absolutely not. - We honestly feel
that he just wanted to intimidate him.
He was upset with him.
Whatever his motive was.
Like, you know, put a show on for people.
I don't know what Tony's motives were.
But I strongly feel that he went up the track
and tried to throw dirt on my son.
I don't think he meant to hit him and kill him,
but that's what happened.
- [Interviewer] You didn't hit Kevin Ward Jr. on purpose?
- Absolutely not.
- [Interviewer] You didn't try to slide a little bit,
throw mud on him?
- You can't throw mud on somebody
when you haven't got to him.
The mud from the tire would go behind you,
so you can't throw mud forward.
It would throw it backwards.
And there wasn't any mud to throw in the first place.
- [Interviewer] So your answer to my question
is no, you didn't do that.
- No, not at all.
- [Interviewer] All right.
Are you aware that sprint car racers do that sometimes,
or have done it?
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] And that's, you agree,
that's a terrible idea, right?
- I've been around sprint car racing a long time.
It's part of the sport.
- [Interviewer] Right, but it's a bad idea,
even though it's part of the sport.
- I've never seen anybody get hurt
by throwing mud at somebody.
- We live in a society
where people constantly wring their hands
and they say, "He coulda killed somebody!"
Or,
you know, it's like, "Don't shoot that BB gun.
You might put somebody's eyes out!"
Well, the great majority of people that shoot BB guns
don't put somebody's eyes out.
But sometimes it happens.
- I wasn't trying to slide anywhere.
I was trying to drive underneath him,
and get away from him.
- [Interviewer] I'm just talking about in general.
You wouldn't wanna slide your car around or near someone,
because you have less control over your car on a slide
than you do when you're just driving it, right?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] That would increase the risk
that you might hit somebody, right?
- Yes.
- [Interviewer] So that's a terrible idea, right?
- Correct.
- [Interviewer] And your testimony under oath
was you were not gonna do that-
- I didn't say-
- [Interviewer] to Kevin Ward Jr.
- I was not trying to slide at him, no.
- [Interviewer] Nor throw mud on him.
- No.
- [Interviewer] All right.
- So Tony Stewart obviously thinks he did something else
than what we found.
And what's interesting is that is Tony Stewart's reality.
That's what he believes that he did.
If they say to stay low, you stay low.
Okay, you don't go high.
And
I don't,
I'm not a mind reader.
I don't know what he was thinking.
But I can talk about the physics in what happened.
And what happened was he not only went high,
but once he got high and got close to where Kevin Ward was,
he decided to step on his throttle.
- You can't hold the police harmless in this case
because
there are
officers that have the same laser scanners that we have
that are accident reconstructionists.
We've had several cases at Knott Laboratory
where we take the police data
and we use it the way it should be used,
with videogrammetry.
And I don't think that in this case,
you just let somebody off the hook
'cause you're not technically able to analyze the data
that you could collect.
So, I don't think there was enough investigation done
on their part.
I don't think that, a lot of times,
that they put forth the effort they need to
for justice to be served.
A great question would be, to that grand jury would be,
show 'em the paths that the vehicles took.
There's six cars that passed Kevin Ward
without impacting him.
Show 'em the path that Tony Stewart took
prior to the accident,
and see if that would change their opinion
of whether there was any intent,
or any harmful intent in this case,
that would've changed their opinion
that a crime was committed.
- Do you think that if a grand jury or the DA
would independently look at that information,
that it might have made a different determination that day?
- Oh my God, yes.
I think that would be.
- I would sure hope that would.
- It's beyond me that we can have
a tape forensically analyzed out in Albany,
and that tape was the one that they used
to supposedly clear Tony,
to clear Tony without any wrongdoing whatsoever.
But yet, in our case, we have it forensically analyzed
and it's completely the opposite.
So, like, how does that happen?
- Oh, there's definitely wounds, you know.
And I think even what was kind of weird
is the perception of the whole thing
started out one direction,
and then just kind of completely flipped
the other direction.
I think at first, it was hands down it was Tony's fault.
And then,
as the whole investigation started going on,
everything was kind of like
moving towards the other direction.
And at the end of it, I think 100%,
it was completely Kevin Ward's fault.
And I don't think the original was the right way
and I don't think the end was the right way.
There's a lot of gray here.
- Like we wanted him held accountable.
And you know, if you do kill somebody,
even if it wasn't intent,
like he didn't intentionally mean to kill my brother.
I also do not believe that.
But he did.
His actions that he had that night
did cause his death.
And even if it does take another five years,
I want his story out there,
the truth of what really happened that day.
(poignant piano music)
(piano music continues)
(dog barking)
- What I admired most about him
is
his zest for life.
He was such a happy person.
He was just one of those happy-go-lucky,
like roll-with-anything kind of personal attitudes.
Like, he just took advantage of life.
(solemn piano music)
He enjoyed his life, the short time that he had.
And I miss his smile.
I miss the happiness he always gave to other people.
He'll be missed forever, for sure.
(solemn piano music)
(solemn piano music continues)
(gritty rock music)
♪ I came from the mud ♪
♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪
♪ Strong like a tree ♪
♪ There's roots where I stand ♪
♪ Oh I've been running from the law ♪
♪ Hope they won't shoot me down soon ♪
♪ Pacing on a sleepless night ♪
♪ Try to catch me howling at the moon ♪
♪ When it rains it pours ♪
♪ Water's up to my chin ♪
♪ Won't stop fighting ♪
♪ To the very end ♪
♪ Many men try to reach it ♪
♪ Many men have failed ♪
♪ Well if you wanna get to heaven ♪
♪ You gotta raise a little hell ♪
♪ And I've been running from the law ♪
♪ Hope they won't shoot me down soon ♪
♪ Pacing on a sleepless night ♪
♪ Howling at the moon ♪
♪ Will you find me ♪
♪ Hope you find me ♪
♪ I'll be back home soon ♪
♪ When the sunrise ♪
♪ When the sun ♪
♪ Rise ♪
♪ Try to catch me howling at the moon ♪