How does a tragic story like this start? Not with a jail sentence. Not with an appeal. Not even with a street race. It starts years earlier.
It’s clear that 19-year-old Adnan Refaeh was a car guy. Driving his black BMW E90 3 Series sedan with neon underglow, he seemed to think public roads were his private drag strip. Maybe that’s harsh, but I’ve been 19 years old. I’ve raised a 19-year-old son. Young men don’t magically wake up one morning with good judgement. Somebody has to teach them. Court records show Refaeh had already piled up seven Highway Traffic Act convictions, including multiple speeding tickets, and had twice ignored a driving ban. Where was his family when he was out there making bad decisions?
As for 30-year-old Mitchell Nodwell, he was old enough to know better. Driving his white first-gen Cadillac CTS, Nodwell got pulled into the same nonsense. Whatever started between the two drivers that day, Refaeh even admitted revving his engine to challenge the Caddy to a street race. Not a chase. A race. The two cars blasted through 22 intersections on Woolwich St. in Guelph. In broad daylight. Think about that for a second. This wasn’t an industrial area at two in the morning. This wasn’t some empty road by the airport. This was a public street lined with homes, businesses, side streets and ordinary people just trying to get through their day.
The race came to an end when Nodwell’s white Cadillac passed Refaeh’s BMW, cut into the oncoming lane and crashed head-on into a Volkswagen Jetta. A teenage girl sitting in the back of the VW suffered serious injuries and spent months recovering in hospital.
And just like that, a few minutes of stupidity changed multiple lives forever. What struck me while reading through the court decisions wasn’t the racing itself. We’ve all seen people do dumb things behind the wheel. What stood out was how many chances there were for this story to end differently.
Seven speeding tickets. Driving bans. Warnings. Previous encounters with the law. At every stage there was an opportunity for family to step in and take away the keys. Give him a dose of enough-is-enough tough love to straighten the kid out. Instead, after running away from the scene of the accident, the family helped him hide from the consequences by giving the boy his dad’s car to drive to work. Even the lawyers allowed Refaeh to move forward with his argument that he was scared for his life, being chased by the Cadillac. The jury didn’t buy that for a second. Nobody did.
Refaeh was convicted of dangerous driving causing bodily harm and failing to remain at the scene. He received a 15-month jail sentence and a three-year driving ban. He appealed both the conviction and the sentence. The Ontario Court of Appeal wasn’t interested; the conviction stands, and the sentence stands.
At Demaras Racing, we’re all about speed. We race endurance cars. We spend weekends at tracks. We modify cars. We talk about horsepower, suspension setups, lap times and driver development. But street racing? Street racing is bullshit. It has nothing to do with car culture except in the movies. Real racing happens at sanctioned tracks with safety barriers and run-off areas in the event of an incident. There are strict rules, official licensing, and safety equipment: serious business. Racers understand the risks because they signed up for them. The family in that Volkswagen didn’t. Neither did that teenage girl.
Take it to the track is more than a slogan. For speed demons and gearheads, organized competitions on sanctioned tracks are the difference between a trophy and a tragedy.
~ by Chris Demaras
This street racing culture is all around the world. Really sad.
People no longer view drinking & driving as victimless crime Its socially unacceptable.
Yet street racing is still seen as no big deal. That’s a real problem… everywhere