NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson Almost Evaded 15 Policemen Before Infamous Arrest in 1956
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NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson Almost Evaded 15 Policemen Before Infamous Arrest in 1956
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It’d be very difficult to find a NASCAR driver who’s had, for the lack of a better word, as insane a history as Junior Johnson. Not only was he a pioneer of the sport, but he was also a successful car owner.
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But most importantly, he was a personality. A peculiar, eccentric personality, something very evident from his infamous arrest story from 1956.
After winning a race in Oxford, Pennsylvania on a Saturday, Johnson came home the next morning to find his father and bother asleep. When he got home, his father asked him to fire up the still.
Johnson recalled that when he went up the still, there was nobody there except him.
“When I reached over to shovel some coke up and stick it in the burner, I heard something right behind me. I looked over my shoulder and there’s a guy standing on top of the box just fixin’ to jump on my back,” he said according to Whiskey Riff.
“So instead of throwing the coke in the burner, I just threw it back over my shoulder and hit him in the face with it and all that stuff. And he was a well-known revenuer there in Wilkesboro that everybody knew him, his name was John West.”
Johnson described that as soon as he hit him, he shouted, “‘Catch Junior Johnson! He’s hit me in the head with a shovel!'”
On December 26, 1985, Junior Johnson was granted a presidential pardon by Ronald Reagan, forgiving his 1956 moonshining arrest.
"It makes me feel like I'm finally finished with what happened. I'm just glad it's over."
READ the story of that pardon: https://t.co/Oa0p9sZuoJ pic.twitter.com/glLG8ZB10t
— nascarman (@nascarman_rr) December 26, 2019
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Junior Johnson would’ve escaped if not for the fence
So when good old John West shouted Junior Johnson’s name, a big realization dawned on the future NASCAR Hall of Famer. “Well, they had it surrounded, they had the thing staked out, it was probably 15 officers all through the woods,” he said.
“I had got away from John down through the woods, and I knew where there was an opening in the gate of the fence down there.”
Johnson thought if he was to escape, he’d have to “hit that opening,” and if he didn’t, he’d run himself into the fence.
As it turned out, he did. He did hit the fence.
“I did miss that opening in the fence, and I hit in that barb wire fence, got tangled up in it,” he said. “And Todd and two other guys caught me.”
