By JOSEPH KELLARD
On May 27, Evan Potts, 22, of Oceanside, posted $500,000 bond in a Mineola court and was release from jail, having been charged with second-degree manslaughter for driving over and killing Ian Sharrin of Long Beach. A few days later, Mesches spoke to the Herald about what he believed was the original near-miss between the two motorists in the West End earlier last month.
Mesches said he had just left a deli at West Beech Street and Minnesota Avenue at about 10 a.m. and was walking to work at Swingbellys Beachside BBQ when he saw a yellow sports car, driving north on Tennessee Avenue, run a red traffic light at West Beech and cut off a black car. Sharrin, 34, was driving a yellow 1978 Porsche, and Potts was at the wheel of a black 2008 Nissan Altima.
“[The sports car] took a right on red without stopping and without paying attention to traffic that was coming down Beech Street,” Mesches said. “He kind of rolled through it and made a right and there were two cars coming, a black car and a silver car behind the black car. I just remember seeing him take the right and the black car slammed on its brakes, and so did the silver one, and all three of them were nearly a foot away from an accident.”
Mesches said he watched the yellow car speed east on West Beech and turn left at either Vermont or Virginia Avenue, heading north toward West Park Avenue. Asked what the driver in the black car did, Mesches said he was unsure, except for one thing: “I know he didn’t speed up after him, because I would have noticed that.”
The incident ended tragically at the intersection of West Park Avenue and National Boulevard, where, according to witnesses, Sharrin got out of his Porsche, stood in front of Potts’s car, yelled at him and pounded on his car. Potts tried to back up, witnesses said, but, blocked by a vehicle behind him, instead drove forward and ran over Sharrin, killing him.
Mesches, 18, was at work at Swingbellys when, at around noon, he first heard about the road rage fatality involving a yellow Porsche and a black Nissan. “Someone came in and told the bartender, and the bartender looked it up online and said it was a yellow Porsche,” said Mesches, a busboy at the West End restaurant and bar. “And I was saying, how many yellow sports cars are in Long Beach at 10 in the morning, when the accident happened?”
The teen told his parents what he had witnessed when he got home that night. Mesches said he had yet to speak to authorities or any other media about the incident.
After a bail hearing on May 19, Stanley Kopilow, Potts’s attorney, said that from what he had been told, the original incident was a near-miss at Minnesota Avenue, and that Sharrin later tailgated Potts.
On May 27, Potts appeared before Nassau County Judge Philip Grella in Mineola. "All I have to say is I'm glad to be out to defend myself against these charges," Potts told a reporter as he walked out of the courtroom. He is scheduled to appear before Grella again on June 15 for a status conference, at which the county district attorney’s office is expected to update the judge on its investigation of the incident.
Kopilow said that he is battling with the D.A.’s office over what he called “favorable evidence” that he said it is withholding but which he has a right to obtain to prepare a defense, including a recording of the 911 call Potts made during the incident and a footprint on his car door that Kopilow suggests may be Sharrin’s.
“We also want to know if the car has been dusted for fingerprints, and we want to know what the toxicology on Ian Sharrin shows — in other words, were there any steroids or other performance-enhancing drug that he had that might have caused this,” Kopilow said. “We’re all aware of what ‘roid rage’ is.”
Eric Phillips, a spokesman for the district attorney, said in response to Kopilow’s comments, “My guess is that the defense attorney is well aware that the law establishes a timeline in which the D.A. shares evidence, and that time is after the grand jury phase of a case. He is undoubtedly equally aware of the importance of this timeline in ensuring that the evidence in a case, regardless of whether or not it's favorable to the defendant, does not influence the testimony of witnesses in the grand jury. The D.A. will obviously be following the timeline laid out very clearly in the law.”
Michael Brown, the Sharrin family’s attorney, did not return calls requestingcomment.
Laurence Belligiere, who shared a dorm room with Sharrin for a year when they attended Oneonta University, said he found the reports that Sharrin was in a rage both surreal and alarming. “While he was not without fault in this incident, something must have happened to enrage Ian so much,” said Belligiere, who now lives in Florida. “There must be more to the story, something Evan Potts did in those blocks leading up to the fatal confrontation. Ian was never one to throw around his weight or size.”
If he is convicted of the manslaughter charges, Potts faces a maximum of 15 years in state prison.
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
