Racing's Dick Trickle Phoned in Own Suicide

Longtime racing driver Dick Trickle not only killed himself yesterday in a North Carolina cemetery at age 71, he matter-of-factly called 911 beforehand to let police know where they would find his body, reports TMZ. The dispatcher initially didn't realize Trickle was referring to himself until he clarified, "No, I'm the one." She asked him to wait for help, to no avail. Trickle's brother in Las Vegas says the retired driver had been in near-constant pain of late, but doctors couldn't figure out the problem, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“He was very down,” says Chuck Trickle. "He more or less said he didn’t know how much longer he could take the pain," which was located under his left breast. Trickle had been a terrific short-track driver early in his career before shifting to NASCAR as a 48-year-old in 1989, reports CNN. Though he didn't win any marquee NASCAR races, Trickle gained renown thanks to his, er, unique name. ESPN's Keith Olbermann went out of his way to mention it during NASCAR coverage. Upon hearing the news yesterday, Olbermann offered up a tweet in tribute: "No sports figure Dan (Patrick and) I had fun with took it more graciously. In fact, gratefully." (More Dick Trickle stories.)