A man has been taken into custody near the Pocono Mountains in connection with the homicide of four University of Idaho students.
Bryan Kohberger, 28, is the person of interest in custody in Monroe County, Pa., sources confirm to NBC10’s Deanna Durante and Brian Sheehan.
Further circumstances regarding the nature of the arrest and the suspect’s capture are not yet known. Kohberger appeared in front of a Monroe County judge around 8:30 a.m. Friday, sources tell NBC10.
The Nov. 13 killings of the four students — Madison Mogan, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin — left their community of Moscow, Idaho in shock and garnered attention nationwide.
Police say the four were stabbed to death in an off-campus house rented by the three female students in the middle of the night, some with wounds that suggest they fought back against their attacker. The investigation to this point has largely come up empty. Two roommates on the first floor who police say slept through the attack have already been ruled out as suspects.
A press conference is scheduled in Moscow, Idaho at 4 p.m. ET.
This is breaking story. Stick with NBC10 for more details as they develop.
Chase Elliott left Pocono Raceway as a third-place finisher and learned when he landed home in Georgia that he had been declared the race winner.
For now, at least.
Joe Gibbs Racing can still appeal NASCAR’s decision to strip Denny Hamlin’s victory and teammate Kyle Busch’s runner-up finish on Sunday after their Toyotas failed inspections. Hamlin was the first Cup winner to be disqualified since April 17, 1960, when Emanuel Zervakis’ victory at Wilson Speedway in North Carolina was thrown out because of an oversized fuel tank.
The Toyotas were shipped to NASCAR’s research and development center in North Carolina for further evaluation and — depending on potential appeals — it could take a week to sort out the winner or other penalties levied against JGR.
Elliott was gifted his fourth win of the season, without the Hendrick Motorsports driver ever leading a lap Sunday in his No. 9 Chevrolet. The series points leader will take the win, even if he doesn’t feel great about achieving it without a checkered flag.
“I was probably just kind of more surprised by it than anything,” Elliott said Monday. “I don’t think any driver wants to win that way. I certainly don’t.”
Hamlin — who had already zipped his young daughter around the track on a victory lap — and the rest of the field had long left Pocono when the NASCAR inspection team found issues in both Toyotas that affected the aerodynamics.
“There really was no reason why there was some material that was somewhere it shouldn’t have been. And that does basically come down to a DQ,” NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said Sunday night.
Team owner Joe Gibbs said Sunday he was “shocked” by the ruling and his organization planned “to review every part of the process that led to this situation.”
Pushing the edge of the rulebook — creatively or illegally — has been a part of NASCAR’s culture since its inception. But NASCAR toughened its punishments entering the 2019 season in a bolder bid to squash cheating. The biggest shift came in inspections, which nailed the JGR drivers on Sunday. NASCAR ensured postrace inspections would take place at the track instead of midweek at the sanctioning body’s research and development center outside Charlotte, North Carolina.
Winning teams found in violation of the rules before 2019 were penalized with postrace fines, point deductions and/or suspensions. But drivers didn’t have victories taken away from them until then.
For example, Joey Logano kept a 2017 win in Richmond even after a midweek teardown of his car at the R&D center showed his Team Penske team broke rules. Logano, though, could not count the win toward postseason consideration.
Hamlin won’t be so lucky. He lost this third win of the season, his record seventh victory at Pocono and a 49th career win that would have tied him on NASCAR’s career list with three-time champion Tony Stewart.
No matter NASCAR’s final judgment, Hamlin will likely stand as the winner among multiple gambling sites. FanDuel said Monday the house rules state bets are settled on the result of the podium presentation regardless of any subsequent disqualifications. Where things gets murky is with fantasy players.
FanDuel said all NASCAR fantasy contests are settled the following day.
The breakdown went like this:
• Elliott received 43 points for finishing first after the postrace inspections.
• Kyle Busch received five points for finishing in 36th place as a result of failing postrace inspection.
• Hamlin earned six fantasy points for finishing 35th.
NASCAR could hit JGR with stiffer points penalties and fines than Zervakis faced in 1960. The Associated Press reported that officials held up Zervakis’ purse of $1,275 after he won the race without a pit stop and “carried about a half-gallon of gasoline more than is considered stock in the technical ratings of his 1960 Chevrolet.” Joe Weatherly earned the win.
Elliott, 27, the 2020 Cup Series champion and NASCAR’s most popular driver, said he was moving on from Pocono as if he did indeed finish third. And he said he won’t ask for the trophy.
“I’m not going to celebrate someone’s misfortune,” Elliott said. “That doesn’t seem right to me. I crossed the line third. That’s kind of how I’m looking at it.”
DraftKings Sportsbook, however, said it will pay out bets on both Hamlin and Elliott.
DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello said house rules state all bets will be settled “based on the unofficial results sent out by NASCAR” but also notes that if there is a “change in the official race result, all previous winners will stand and new winners will also be settled as won.”
Caesars Sportsbook said all of its bets were settled according to the official order of finish, with Elliott as the winner and Hamlin and Busch finishing 35th and 36th, respectively.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
LONG POND, Pa. — NASCAR stripped Denny Hamlin of his win at Pocono Raceway when his No. 11 Toyota failed inspection and was disqualified, awarding Chase Elliott the Cup Series victory.
Joe Gibbs Racing had Hamlin’s car and runner-up Kyle Busch’s No. 18 Toyota both disqualified. Hamlin lost his record seventh victory at Pocono and his third win of the season. Busch led a race-high 63 laps.
NASCAR believed the last time it disqualified an apparent winner was April 17, 1960, when Emanuel Zervakis’ victory at Wilson Speedway in North Carolina was thrown out because of an oversized fuel tank.
The penalties can be appealed and both Toyotas were sent to NASCAR’s research and development center in North Carolina.
“There was some issues discovered that affect aero in the vehicle,” NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said. “There really was no reason why there was some material that was somewhere it shouldn’t have been. And that does basically come down to a DQ.”
Moran said the parts in question were the front fascia — essentially the nose cone — and final decisions “should be sorted out by next week.”
Elliott, who had finished third, was given his fourth win of the season. He never led a lap in the No. 9 Chevrolet.
Moran said the inspection “rules have tightened up” with the introduction this season of a new car. NASCAR’s newest version is essentially a kit car. Teams get all the same pieces from varying vendors and have detailed instructions regarding how to put it together.
“We don’t want to be here talking about this problem,” Moran said. “But the teams and the owners and everybody was well aware that this new car was going to be kept with some pretty tight tolerances. There’s some areas that all the teams are well aware that we can not go down the path that we had in the past with the other car.”
The failures marred what had been a banner day for JGR.
Hamlin had seemingly won for the third time this season and passed Hall of Fame driver Jeff Gordon for most wins at Pocono with seven. Hamlin swept two races at Pocono in his rookie season in 2006, and added wins in 2009, 2010, 2019 and 2020. Now, he remains tied with the four-time NASCAR champion.
Hamlin had plenty to handle from the start, when the pole sitter tagged the wall on the opening lap. He recovered — at 400 miles on the 2 1/2-mile tri-oval there’s plenty of racing ahead — then had to watch Busch lead the majority of the race. Oh, then there was this thorny issue of settling a lingering score with Ross Chastain.
Chastain wrecked Hamlin two times in a month earlier this season — Hamlin counted two more times from last season — and was fed-up with the aggressive driving of the watermelon farmer. Hamlin refused to give his rival an inch off a restart at Pocono and forced Chastain into the wall with 16 laps left in the race. Chastain slammed the wall and triggered a wreck that collected several drivers, including winless Kevin Harvick, who is fighting for a playoff spot.
“What did you want me to do? What did you expect me to do,” Hamlin asked in the immediate aftermath.
Chastain, who has two wins this season driving for Trackhouse Racing, sheepishly understood comeuppance was due.
“I think that’s something that’s been owed to me for a few months now,” Chastain said.
Hamlin also lost his tie with former teammate Tony Stewart on NASCAR’s career wins list with 49.
“We’ve just been good friends and he’s certainly someone that I look up to from a talent standpoint,” Hamlin said. “He was the guy that for 36 races was a threat to win, and that’s what I hope to be some day.”
Hamlin is pretty close: He’s a three-time Daytona 500 champion and part owner of 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan. About the only blemish on his resume is the championship he’s failed to win — and the first DQ of his Cup career.
Hamlin’s young daughter burst into tears of joy and he sent her to retrieve the checkered flag. Taylor Hamlin clutched the flag as she slid through the passenger’s side window and took a victory lap around Pocono with dad at the wheel.
TY GAME
Ty Gibbs finished 16th for 23XI Racing in his first career Cup start subbing for the injured Kurt Busch.
Busch suffered a head injury during a hard hit Saturday in qualifying and was not cleared to race by NASCAR’s medical staff. That opened the door for the 19-year-old Gibbs.
In a pinch, the grandson of Joe Gibbs wore Busch’s firesuit and Hamlin’s shoes.
“I never thought I’d race with these guys,” Gibbs said. “It was just cool being next to them on the track. To 10-year-old Ty, that means a lot.”
Grandpa Joe was pretty proud. “He was discouraged that he couldn’t get more out of it,” Gibbs said. “I think he realizes how tough it is.”
NO DEAL
Gibbs remained concerned JGR has yet to reach a new contact with Kyle Busch.
“We had a couple of companies, we thought [were in] that wound up to be disappointments for us,” Gibbs said. “But it is hard and it is discouraging.”
UP NEXT
IndyCar and NASCAR share next weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. IndyCar races Saturday on the road course; NASCAR races Sunday.
LONG POND, Pa. — Kurt Busch was not cleared by NASCAR’s medical staff to compete in Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway, and the 23XI Racing driver was replaced by 19-year-old Ty Gibbs.
The 43-year-old Busch, who has hinted next season will be his last driving in NASCAR, tweeted he suffered from “concussion-like symptoms” from a hit suffered during Saturday’s qualifying session.
“The tests indicate that I am still recovering,” Busch wrote.
Busch, who has made 776 career Cup starts, is the 2004 series champion and is in his first season driving for a team co-owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin. His No. 45 Chevrolet spun on Saturday and slammed into NASCAR’s protective safer barriers.
23XI selected Gibbs, the grandson of Joe Gibbs Racing owner and former NFL coach Joe Gibbs, to make his first start. Gibbs finished second in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race and third in the series points standings.
When the summer hits its peak and the weather is fine in the northeast, there is arguably no better place to be than the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. The area is blessed with natural beauty, from its lush greens to its many bodies of water, and it is also the site of one of the most unique and challenging tracks in all of American auto racing.
This weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series makes its annual trip to Pocono Raceway for the M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400. Dubbed the “Tricky Triangle”, Pocono is notorious for its triangle-shaped configuration that features three completely different corners at the end of very long straightaways. The track’s 2.5-mile configuration draws from other great speedways — now-defunct Trenton Speedway in Turn 1, Indianapolis in Turn 2, and The Milwaukee Mile in Turn 3 — to create a track that presents a test of driver skill, crew ingenuity, and equipment durability.
How to Watch the NASCAR Cup Series at Pocono
Date: Sunday, July 24
Location: Pocono Raceway — Long Pond, Pa.
Time: 3 p.m. ET
TV: USA Network
Stream: fuboTV (try for free)
What to watch
After Christopher Bell’s win last week at New Hampshire, the collective eyes of NASCAR are now firmly upon both Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. Both drivers have had outstanding seasons so far, ranking third and fourth in points respectively with a still somewhat-realistic chance of contending for the regular season championship. But without a win, neither driver is assured a spot in the playoffs yet, and both stand to be bumped if there are new winners from below the cutoff line between now and the end of the regular season at Daytona.
The pressure is now squarely on both Blaney and Truex to find Victory Lane and find it soon. Truex came close last week by leading over half the race before tire strategy cost him a chance to win, and he’s won at Pocono twice in 2015 and 2018. Blaney’s first ever win, meanwhile, was at Pocono in 2017.
In 2020 and 2021, NASCAR experimented with double-header weekends by splitting what had been two annual races for Pocono between one weekend, with a 325-mile race on Saturday and then a 350-mile event the next day. Last year, neither race disappointed — Kyle Larson blew a tire and crashed while leading in the final corner of the Saturday race, allowing Alex Bowman to steal the victory. Then the next day, Kyle Busch earned a remarkable victory that saw him drive to the front despite a transmission problem that left him stuck in fourth gear.
This year, Pocono returns to hosting a single, 400-mile event, which marks the return of conventional strategies to a race that has offered anything but.
The history of Pocono is littered with many, many races where strategy has come into play, whether through races decided by fuel mileage or races where teams have used alternate pit strategies to gain time and track position. In recent years, the introduction of stage racing has created an extra element of strategy, with teams often having to choose between whether to bring their driver to pit road to set them up for the rest of the race, or leave them on-track to earn stage points before coming to the pits and losing track position under caution.
The aforementioned second race of 2021 highlights something that takes on even more importance this year: The ability of the transmission to withstand 400 miles of upshifting and downshifting.
Even with traditional four-speed transmissions, drivers have long tried to utilize shifting at Pocono in order to get the best possible RPM range and acceleration for the track’s long straightaways. Now, the five-speed transmission of the Next Gen car stands to make shifting at Pocono even more important, and it likely also increases the risk of something going wrong v
Midway through the second race, Kyle Busch’s transmission failed, leaving him stuck in fourth gear and unable to accelerate and get up to top speed quickly. If the race had featured a series of restarts from that point onwards, it would have marked a death sentence for Busch and his team. Instead, the race featured a long green flag run to the finish, and Busch’s extra pit stop under the last caution to try and repair his transmission meant that he had more fuel than the rest of the field, allowing him to drive to the front and take a victory that will surely amplify his racing legend for years to come.
Pick to win
(Odds via Caesars Sportsbook)
Martin Truex Jr. (+1000): It’s a little hard to believe this, but with Christopher Bell winning last week at New Hampshire, Martin Truex Jr. is the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver to not have a win this season. But over the past month, it feels like Truex’s time to visit Victory Lane is coming.
Since dispelling retirement rumors by announcing that he would return to the Cup Series in 2023, Truex has led 281 laps — more than any other driver — in the last four races. Truex has been a serious threat to win two weeks in a row, first at Atlanta and then in a dominating performance through the first two stages at New Hampshire. Couple that with his two career wins at Pocono and strength of Gibbs at Pocono — the team has won seven of the last nine races at the speedway — and Truex is a solid bet to affirm his playoff spot on Sunday.