No jail for Potts in road rage death

Having been found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in June, Oceanside resident Evan Potts was sentenced on Tuesday by Nassau County Judge Phillip Grella to five years’ probation for the 2009 road rage death of Long Beach resident Ian Sharinn.

In June, a Nassau County jury found Potts, 24, not guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Sharinn, a 34-year-old engineer.

The fatal encounter between the two men, on May 15, 2009, began on West Park Avenue in Long Beach. According to police, Potts, who was driving east in a 2008 Nissan Altima, cut in front of Sharinn, who was at the wheel of a 1978 Porsche, and Sharinn pursued him. Potts eventually turned south on National Boulevard, then made a U-turn back toward Park. When he saw Potts at the intersection, Sharinn ran a red light and blocked Potts’s car. When Sharinn got out of his car and stood in front of Potts’s vehicle, Potts drove over him, killing him.

The maximum sentence for criminally negligent homicide is four years in prison without probation. If Potts had been convicted of manslaughter, he could have faced up to 15 years in prison.

On Tuesday morning, the atmosphere in the courtroom where Grella handed down Potts’s sentence was emotional and tense, as family members and friends of both Potts and Sharinn awaited the decision. The proceedings were moved from Grella’s regular courtroom to a larger one down the hall of the Nassau County Courthouse in order to accommodate a large crowd.

Both the prosecutors, from the Nassau County district attorney’s office, and Potts’s attorneys made their cases one last time before Grella. Assistant District Attorney Brendan Ahern, who called for the maximum sentence, noted four cases in Nassau County that led to prison sentences for criminally negligent homicide that originally involved manslaughter charges. Ahern also emphasized Potts’s previous trouble with the law, pointing out his history of arrests both before and after the fatal confrontation with Sharinn.