Guy Fieri detailed a terrifying experience that became a wake-up call for him when he was 19 years old on Tuesday’s (July 25th) episode of the Now What? with Brooke Shields podcast. The Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host said he was falsely accused of drunk driving in a fatal car crash.
“I was in a fatality car accident when I was 19, when I was in college. I wasn't driving. I was in the backseat and unfortunately, I was with a bunch of guys and we were drinking,” he recalled. Fieri was a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, at the time.
“We were screwing off and we actually were down at the drag boat races in Las Vegas,” he continued, sharing that the driver sped off after seeing a police car. “We got chased and the car flipped and the guy next to me was killed. It was horrific. Everybody was messed up.”
After being airlifted to the hospital, the celebrity chef said he was “handcuffed to the gurney, with everybody in that car saying that I was the one that was driving.” He chalked this up to the fact that the driver and the other passengers had all served in the military together.
Fieri was later arrested in his dorm room, but said the “cops knew” he wasn’t the one responsible for the crash. He did not reveal how the case came to be resolved.
Now, he said he tells his kids, “Don't trust anybody to drive you. Don't trust what anybody puts in a drink and gives you. Don't trust anybody who tells you this is safe or this is smart. You have to be the master of your domain. You have to be in control of your environment.”
