Harry Scribner, a near 30-year competitor in the ranks for NHRA Pro Stock, has been arrested and is being held in the Ventura County Jail after a shooting at his home in Simi Valley, California.
Authorities suspect that Scribner shot and killed his daughter’s 31-year-old boyfriend, Brian Wall, also of Simi Valley. According to local newspapers, police reports indicate that Scribner heard loud pounding on his front door at roughly 1:30 A.M. He responded to the pounding, armed with a gun. Upon exiting the house he saw Wall and his daughter, a confrontation ensued, and Wall was fatally shot. Scribner waited for the police to arrive and according to the police was cooperative with them upon their arrival.
Looking back on Scribner’s Pro Stock career, it is one punctuated by footnotes. He was the number nine qualifier at the first ever 500ci NHRA Pro Stock race at Pomona in 1982. Before that race the class was always factored on pounds per cubic inch of displacement. NHRA went with the 500ci standard to make the class easier to patrol with tech and try to control costs for competitors who normally had multiple engines for their match racing and others for legal competition. Scribner lost in the first round of that race.
Scribner won the only national event of his near-30-year career in 1988 at the old Sears Point raceway. The event was called the California Nationals and he defeated Don Beverly (another footnote guy) on a holeshot to take the win. The interesting thing to note is that he did it in a Camaro. His win at Sonoma marked the last time that a Camaro would win Pro Stock for 10 years. It wouldn’t be until 1998 when Kurt Johnson (ironically, as you’ll see in a minute) put a Camaro in the Pro Stock winners’ circle again.
It was Scribner who gave Kurt Johnson his first break behind the wheel, allowing Kurt to pilot his car at several events. KJ repaid him by crashing the car in Phoenix, a week after the 1993 Winternationals.
Tom, Dick, and Harry Scribner (seriously) appear to have regularly competed in Pro Stock all the way into the mid to late ’90s. In the late ’80s they ran nearly the entire IHRA tour when then IHRA owner Billy Meyer decided to try and bolster his Pro Stock fields by adding scads of weight to the mountain-motor IHRA cars and inviting 500ci powered NHRA runners to come into the fold.
The last record we can find of Harry Scribner driving a car is at the 2000 NHRA Winternationals at Pomona where it appears he went out in the first round. Through his career Scribner was found in Chevrolets, Fords, and Oldsmobiles.
