NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan says a ‘catfished’ stalker threatened to kill her boyfriend
Popular NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan posted a video Monday night on her YouTube channel in which she said that she and her boyfriend, Chase Cabre, are being harassed by a stalker issuing threats against Cabre.
Deegan, a 20-year-old driver in NASCAR’s Truck Series, is an active social media user with 1.2 million Instagram followers and 433,000 YouTube subscribers on her channel. She typically posts lifestyle and racing content, but her latest YouTube video, titled “Our Lives Are Being Threatened,” took a serious tone as Deegan and Cabre described a situation in which they said Cabre’s safety has been threatened by an individual infatuated with Deegan.
Deegan said that the situation forced her to pull out of a non-NASCAR race in Bradenton, Fla., over the weekend. When she initially announced that she would not run in the Freedom 500 race at DeSoto Speedway, she said that she was dealing with something on the “personal safety side,” but revealed more details in the 15-minute video in which she appears sitting next to Cabre in their North Carolina home.
Deegan said that an individual, who she did not name but described as “he,” sent an “eight-page handwritten letter” to her Truck Series team, David Gilliland Racing, claiming that the two were dating for “multiple, multiple months” and that he was “in love with” Deegan and that she was “his soulmate.”
“It kind of scared me a little bit, because I’ve dealt with stalker situations before, people being obsessive over me and actually taking action on it,” Deegan said.
Deegan said that she looked up the individual’s account on social media and discovered that he was being “catfished by a fake Hailie Deegan account,” meaning tricked into believing that he was corresponding with Deegan on social media, which Deegan said was not the case.
She said that the fake account inaccurately made it seem like Deegan was being “held hostage” in her relationship with Cabre and that the fake account said that Cabre was physically abusing her.
“None of that is true,” Deegan said. “It makes them (stalkers) feel a lot of anger towards Chase, which, if the situation was real, would be understandable, but it’s not.”
She described the unnamed individual as a man living in North Carolina near the team’s race shop located in Mooresville.
“The day that it pretty much changed was a few days ago when he posted stuff saying he was practically gonna come kill Chase,” Deegan said. “And his exact words were not, ‘Gonna kill Chase,’ but he’s gonna come and he’s, ‘Gonna be the last thing Chase ever sees.’”
The YouTube video Deegan posted contained threatening audio allegedly pulled from a video sent by the individual, as well as screenshots of a hand holding a gun and knife with Cabre’s Instagram handle tagged in the caption.
Deegan said that she was aware of the individual’s concerning posts since December, since “everything kind of led to death” in his messages, but that when the threats escalated more recently, she called the police, who spent at least one night stationed at her home.
“It makes you nervous when you have someone that says they’re gonna try to kill you that night, and I’m nervous for Chase because we live in the same home,” Deegan said. “Like this is our house, this is our home. You don’t want people saying that type of stuff to you. It makes you very uncomfortable and uneasy.”
According to Deegan, she had security cameras installed that are constantly surveilling her property, and that police, FBI agents and NASCAR security are aware of the situation. She also said that her party is accompanied by security when racing at Millbridge Speedway.
“There’s been a laundry list of people kind of at our help in this situation because right now what they can do is protect,” Cabre, 25, said.
“When we raced this past week, we have security around us,” Cabre said. “We have done the right, proper things to at least feel secure while we’re there and can focus on racing, but it still kind of rattles in the back of your mind.”
Deegan said that she and her father, professional motocross racer Brian Deegan, corresponded with the individual to try to explain the reality of the situation, but that she and Cabre continued to receive alarming messages “a hundred times a day” at minimum from the account.
“I’m over it,” Deegan said. “Like, I’m so over it.”
“Honestly, like, if you are watching this video right now, please stop,” Cabre said, attempting to address the individual directly. “Please, like seriously, just stop.”
“It’s become a nuisance in our life, because it’s put everything on a halt,” Deegan said. “We are backed up. We had to get two cars ready for Millbridge here on Wednesday to go race knowing in the back of our head there’s a chance that we have to watch our back there, and that’s not cool.”
“We don’t really know what to do from here,” Deegan continued. “All we can do is try to feel safe in our home, have the cops protect us, but when you don’t know someone and they’re threatening your livelihood, it’s hard to know what action you should be taking.”
“It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me scared. You shouldn’t be scared at your own house.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2022 at 12:15 AM.
