L.B. road rage trial begins

For Long Beach resident Ian Sharinn, May 15, 2009, was supposed to be a typical day — a sunny Friday morning, 78 degrees — a day the 34-year-old engineer had planned to close on a new home he was buying with his fiancée.

“What you will learn throughout the course of this trial is that May 15 was not just another day,” Prosecutor Everett Witherell told the jury. “It was the day that Ian Sharinn was killed.”

So began the opening statements in front of Judge Philip Grella in Nassau County Court on Monday, the first day of the manslaughter trial of Oceanside resident Evan Potts, 24, who faces a maximum of 15 years in prison for running over and killing Sharinn in an incident of road rage following a high-speed car chase through Long Beach. Potts pleaded not guilty nearly a year ago to charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

Among the first witnesses to testify were Sharinn’s brother, Marc, former Long Beach Fire Chief Scott Kemins, who responded to the scene as an advanced medical technician, and Detective Lt. James Canner of the Police Department.

Canner, a 21-year member of the department, testified that as he neared the scene, he heard a woman’s horrific cries. “She was screaming ‘He killed him! He killed him!’ and that drew my attention,” Canner said of the chaotic scene. “I had never heard screams like that before.”

Canner said that he saw two men chase Potts and then pull him from his vehicle when he stopped on the southbound side of National Boulevard shortly after he ran over Sharinn.

Asked about Potts’s demeanor, Canner described him as “very excited.” “He said, ‘I tried to call 911 and I didn’t know what do, I didn’t know what to do,’” Canner recounted. “When I got back to the intersection, I saw the victim laying in the street … there was a lot of blood.”

Members of Sharinn’s family sat with their faces in their hands during some of the more detailed testimony, while Potts sat hunched over in his chair.

Prosecutors said that the incident began in the West End when Potts, driving a 2008 Nissan Altima, cut Sharinn off, nearly causing a collision, and Sharinn, at the wheel of a 1978 Porsche, pursued him. For two miles, Witherell said, the two men drove aggressively near each other on West Park Avenue. Potts eventually turned south on National Boulevard, then made a U-turn back

toward Park.

Witherell said that Potts intended to confront Sharinn and “wouldn’t let it go,” while Potts’s attorney, Stanley Kopilow, told the jury that Potts turned back to get Sharinn’s license plate number and report the incident to police. Kopilow said that Sharinn had taken Potts’s license number as well, but had threatened during the pursuit to “track” Potts to his home.

Upon seeing Potts at the intersection, Sharrin ran a red light in order to block Potts’s car, both attorneys said. Wedged between Sharrin’s car in front of him and a Ford Bronco behind him, prosecutors said, Potts gunned his car after an irate Sharinn — standing 6 feet 5 and weighing 250 pounds — got out of his car, stood in front of Potts’s car and said, “Now what the [expletive] are you going

to do?”

Potts drove over Sharinn, who clung to the hood of the car, Witherell said, and tried desperately not to get pulled underneath.

“You’re not going to hear that Ian Sharinn acted like a saint that day … we’re not going to sugar-coat it for you,” Witherell continued, describing Sharinn being pulled underneath the vehicle and crushed. “At that moment, the defendant decided that he was going to end this. As Ian is holding on for dear life, [Potts] is taunting him, calling him a ‘big stud’ as he ran him over.”

Witherell, a Nassau County assistant district attorney with the Vehicular Crimes Bureau, said that he intended to present evidence including a recording of a 911 call Potts made, during which, Witherell said, Sharinn’s voice also can be heard, and forensic evidence such as Sharinn’s handprints on Potts’s car.

“What [witnesses] all remember is one image … of 6-5, 250-pound Ian Sharinn, standing unarmed directly in front of that left front tire and being crushed by it,” Witherell said.

But while the prosecution portrayed Potts, who attends Queens College, as a callous driver who taunted Sharinn during the chase, Kopilow painted a different picture. According to his account, Potts — at 5 feet 8 and 140 pounds — feared for his life and tried to escape an enraged and relentless Sharinn as Sharinn chased him through Long Beach. Kopilow told the jury that his client didn’t mean to cut Sharinn off and didn’t intend to kill him.

“Did Ian Sharinn call the cops? No, he took the law into his own hands,” Kopilow said. “… [O]nly one man was doing the hunting that day … and that was Ian Sharinn.”

Kopilow told the jury that the prosecution would not be able to prove that Sharinn was in front of Potts’s car. He said that Sharinn was on the driver’s side of the car, cursing and threatening Potts.

“Once Mr. Sharinn is no longer in front of that car, he is out of the sightline of someone who was trapped and chased by a predator through the city of Long Beach,” Kopilow said, adding that Sharinn’s foot got stuck in the wheel as Potts tried to flee.

Kopilow urged the jury to see both sides of the incident and said that the 911 recording would show that Potts was “in a panic” and didn’t know what to do, and when he saw a way out, he took it. Kopilow contended that Potts, who was not charged with leaving the scene of an accident, stopped to compose himself on National Boulevard.

But prosecutors maintained that Potts never spoke to 911 operators. Witherell told the jury that the defense’s claim that Sharinn was not directly in front of the vehicle’s left front tire contradicts forensic evidence and accounts by witnesses.

Ultimately, Witherell said, no matter how scared Potts may have been, Sharinn did not deserve to die. “Ian had the right to live,” he said. “That defendant didn’t have the right to take that away from him.”

Neither Potts nor members of the Sharinn family would comment. After the court session, Kopilow took issue with the prosecution’s version of events and said that Potts was never pulled from the car but got out on his own, and that witness testimony would support that.

“You’re going to see an attempt by the people to shift responsibility onto Evan,” Kopilow said. “The evidence will clearly show otherwise.”

Michael Brown, an attorney for the Sharinn family, said, “They are confident that the jury will agree that this was a horrible criminal act, and as a result, Mr. Potts will be punished for his actions.”

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