If the kid left the scene as described by the witness in the video and then came back to the scene to confront the guy, why isn't he being charged with murder?

"If you have ever had your foot stepped on and pushed backwards, that's what it looked like. The car hit his leg right in line with the wheel on the driver's side, the guy went straight back, hit his head real hard, and the kid just stepped on the accelerator, went right over him like he was a cat in the road," said witness John Messina.

"Strong Island" is what folks from the outside call the place. Mostly because of the knuckle head attitude.

I grew up there and really don't like most of it. Long Beach is one of the nicer parts, but the idiots are all over..

Not sure how that could happen- the tire is set back some distance. His foot would already have to be way underneath the front end to have that effect wouldn't it?

BTW, i think that's the same witness that's in the video posted earlier in this thread, and his testimony does completely contradict the other witness who is quoted in the story. The guy in the video was dripping attitude- the "strong island" effect that Gaijin discussed was quite obvious.

I'm guessing this kid is locked up because he went back to the scene after making his first clean escape. That was horrendously stupid too, i realize that. He should face some charges, i just don't know that the ones he is facing are the most appropriate.

Still, standing in front of a car trying to flee, pounding the hood, running redlights, blocking cars in, blocking an intersection...the Porsche guy must've thought he was Magnum PI?

"Strong Island" seems to sum it all up quite well.

This has been a really interesting discussion, and it's enabled me to envision a less lethal solution if I were to ever find myself in a similar situation with an enraged guy out of his car beating on my car and jumping in front of it.

I believe I could get out of there by moving forward if I'm blocked from behind and I'm fairly certain the guy isn't carrying.

I would do it by moving forward with my left foot on the brake and modulating my forward movement so that my speed is such that I'm just pushing the guy as he hops backwards if he stays in front of me... then I can just gradually increase it a little and give him a chance to hop to the side out of the way, at which point, I can speed away.

If he fell backwards in front of the car, I'd just stop and give him the opportunity to get up and move aside. If he chose to get back in front, well... rinse and repeat as necessary until he wised up and gave up.

If he chose to just lie on the ground in front of my car, he's no threat to me at that point, and I could just lay on the horn and wait until help arrives.

If he jumps on the hood... well, I can deal with that if it happens... I'm pretty sure I could get him off without killing him... or I could just drive around until I found a cop.

I realize the Long Island situation was probably so adrenaline-fueled, the Altima driver had totally lost control of himself, so he probably never had a chance to think up a rational strategy... just saying what I would do.

Hey, I happen to agree that Big Man is the one responsible for his own death. Based on the available facts it seems fairly cut and dry....big dude, cutting the Altima off, banging on the hood, calling 911....

Thing is in a case like this the cops are practically required to arrest somebody, if just to cover their own azzez and those charges are just an excuse to hold him and cover all the bases.

Truth be told, Big Man likely didn't deserve to die, but nobody in their right minds would use their own body to stop a car like that and Little Man seems very much to have justification to be scared.

Big Man dead, Little Man screwed and most likely won't see day one in real prison.

Turn the steering wheel 1/4 turn to the left and the guy doesn't even have to be in front of the car for it to happen. Haven't you ever seen someone get their foot run over? Well, imagine if they fell over and the driver gunned it. Sounds like murder to me. We read completely different things from the limited info available. :cool:

Thats why they call them FLID's.....

FLID, haven't heard that in a while.

no comment

May 20, 2009

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-lirage2012782934may19,0,4822128.story



crop

"Potts, of Oceanside, appeared for the second time Tuesday before Long Beach City Judge Stanley Smolkin, who cut bail to $500,000 bond or $250,000 cash, from the $5 million bond or $500,000 cash he had set Saturday."

crop

"Kopilow, of Garden City, said at least one witness said Sharinn "was a raging lunatic." Kopilow added that there is a footprint on his client's driver's side door and that he was scared for his life.

An assistant district attorney said that Potts called 911 to get on the record that there was damage to the Altima."

crop

a foot print by big dude on his door?

i dont understand why the kid came back. i dont really understand the entire chronology of events at all

but if some big dude was kicking my door, to me that says he means business and talking time is over. i would have tried to avoid hitting the guy, but if i did run him over, i probably wouldnt feel bad about it.

i wonder what this kid did that was so bad to make big dude lose it like this

last year while on my motorcycle, two kids practically brushed up against me at what im guessing was around 150 mph or more and almost put me into a tank slap at 70 mph. they were so close that the draft from their bikes almost knocked me over. this was not a mistake by them. this was 2 immature idiots taking a gamble with my life

i was too stunned to chase them and i wasnt armed anyway, but i know if i had a gun and could have caught them, i would have emptied a clip into both of their heads without hesitation. when someone selfishly almost kills you because they wanna have some fun, thats a natural reaction i think. their actions shook me up that much.

but what did this kid do? run a red light or a stop sign or cut him off in traffic? mistakes happen. people make mistakes all the time. sure, innocent mistakes kill people or damage property, but get over it and be thankful noone was hurt and go about your day. if your that upset, call the cops with the kids license plate. but kick his door and pound his hood? whoa.

No, i have never seen anyone get their foot run over with the exception of a private getting his foot ran over by an M-113 track. It removed said foot cleanly.

I have been ran over a couple times, but always managed to get "mostly" out of the way.

"Kopilow, of Garden City, said at least one witness said Sharinn "was a raging lunatic." Kopilow added that there is a footprint on his client's driver's side door and that he was scared for his life.

An assistant district attorney said that Potts called 911 to get on the record that there was damage to the Altima."

Big Porsche dude was literally "asking for it" IMO. Total raging nutcase. And look what it got him...

June 4, 2009
L.B. Herald is local fish wrap





http://www.liherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20326011&BRD=1601&PAG=461&dept_id= 478677&rfi=6


Potts posts bail after manslaughter charge in road rage incident

A yellow sports car cut off a black car. That’s how Long Beach resident Jake Mesches described what may have sparked a road rage incident that left a man dead on a city street on May 15.

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. West End of LB is 2 miles west of rampage]

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 requesting comment.

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.

Two idiots, one dead and the other in jail.
Both are responsible, both are punished.
Streets are safer, but it is still tragic that they both had to act so stupidly. Some folks can't handle their testosterone.

just received from a friend


"One problem the kid has is the DA is a publicity hound."

Kid = Not Guilty.

'Roid-Raging Porsche Driver = Guilty (and dead).

Let's call it a draw and move on.