Bubba Wallace recounted a heartbreaking story from his childhood on the “Dale Jr. Download” podcast.
The NASCAR driver talked about Kyle Larson using a racial slur during an iRacing stream, Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and how his own family was impacted by police brutality when he was just nine years old.
An officer shot and killed Wallace’s cousin in 2003 while he was at his sister’s basketball tournament.
“I was running around the gym with all the other brothers and sisters there, and all of a sudden, I hear a scream, like the worst scream that you’d want to hear,” Wallace said. “Not like a somebody-scared-you scream, like something bad had just happened. And I look over and I see my mom running out the door, and we had just found out my cousin had been shot and killed by a police officer. Unarmed.”
Being just nine years old, Wallace admitted he didn’t exactly understand what happened. But that’s not the case now.
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“And so I was young,” he said. “I didn’t understand it. We lost a family member. But now seeing everything come full circle, I totally get it now.”
Wallace detailed what led to the shooting.
“They had just left somewhere, a football game or something. He was (19), and they all went to a gas station here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Playing loud music, it was a whole crowd, a hang-out spot. … But the store clerk, who happened to be white, felt threatened that there was more African Americans and that something bad was going to happen. So she called the cops, and the police officer had ordered my cousin, Sean, to put his hands up, and he did.
“And then that officer walked away, and (my cousin) went to grab his phone to call his mom because he was scared and was shot and killed from the other police officer. And it’s like all because people were having a good time, not bothering somebody but somehow, people are afraid. Why are you afraid of black people? That’s just the thing I don’t understand. Like, we’re minding our own business, we’re having a good time, and somebody’s life was taken, and it happened to my family member. And I’ve never shared that story.”
Protests have taken place across all 50 U.S. states in the wake of racial injustice and police brutality.
