Like with any high-profile death suffered in the making of a program for a major studio, the events surrounding the passing of Street Outlaws: Fastest in America’s Ryan Fellows are — to the best of the public’s ability to ascertain — a matter of discussion.
Street Outlaws: Fastest in America was — and, befuddlingly, still is — a spinoff show spawned by the Discovery reality series Street Outlaws. The show follows teams of drag racers around the United States, competing in street races. It is to the Fast and the Furious franchise what Pawn Stars is to Uncut Gems.
In August 2022, the series traveled to sunny Las Vegas, Nevada for an unsanctioned street race. Sometime between the late hours of Aug. 7 and the early morning of the next day, series star Ryan Fellows was racing a Nissan 240Z in the eighth out of nine scheduled races when he lost control of the vehicle at the tail end of the event, rolling off the road not far from the finish line. The vehicle exploded into flames, with nearby spectators unsuccessfully rushing to pull Fellows from the wreckage. Fellows left behind a wife and two children.
Details surrounding the culpability of Discovery are murky. The network has refused to comment further than expressing their sympathies to the bereaved. The bereaved, for their part, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming that the race that ended Fellows’ life was conducted on a “dusty, weather-beaten, rough asphalt roadway” that “didn’t meet any of the industry safety standards,” according to Deadline.
Whatever the case, this was not the first severe accident that occurred during the filming of the franchise. In January of the same year, TMZ reported that Street Outlaws cast members, the husband and wife team of JJ Da Boss and Tricia were involved in a serious wreck while filming, with the latter ending up in the hospital.
