The speeding Maryland driver who sparked a six-car crash in Tribeca that killed a woman was involved in a 27-mile car chase with cops just a day earlier, prosecutors disclosed Tuesday.
Sherman Harrison, 37, was on I-95 in Virginia when he started driving backward in the pouring rain at about 4:30 a.m., said Assistant DA Shira Arnow, successfully arguing that the defendant should be held without bail.
Arnow said that after several concerned drivers called 911, Virginia troopers located Harrison — but he fled in his 2012 Audi A6 “reaching speeds of over 120 mph.”
Three trooper sedans with flashing lights and blaring sirens pursued him, trying to box him in. But Harrison outmaneuvered them and took off to his home in Maryland, Arnow told Justice Diane Kiesel.
“If you watch the dashcam, the wipers are going so fast you can’t even see the road in front of them,” Arnow said of the footage she obtained from Virginia authorities of the high-speed chase. “It was pitch black.”
About 27 hours later, on Dec. 29, 2018, Harrison zipped north up West Street in lower Manhattan in the same car, flying through at least three traffic lights before slamming into the Honda CRV of Amy Phillipson, 57.
The Honda flipped over and burst into flames, as Harrison took off on foot down Hubert Street with his pet Rottweiler, Jacks, in tow.
Harrison has been indicted on a top count of second-degree murder, for which he faces up to life in prison.
He pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court to the murder rap — as well as manslaughter, leaving the scene of an incident and unlawful possession of ammunition.
Cops recovered a .40-caliber Glock magazine loaded with 17 rounds from Harrison’s abandoned car.
Defense lawyer Adam Miller said this was Harrison’s first arrest and suggested he was suffering from serious mental health issues.
He argued that the upgraded murder rap was unreasonable and unsupported by the facts.
Harrison, a business graduate of the University of Maryland, faces two felony charges in Virginia for the car chase.
It took authorities there a day to track him down using his license plate, and by then he was already in custody for the gruesome Manhattan collision, prosecutors said.