A criminal saga involving a high-speed car chase – and crash – on Interstate 81 earlier this year has ended in a nine-and-a-half year prison sentence. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
On February 9, as WMRA previously reported, 30-year-old Corey Potter from Philadelphia fled north up I-81 from a Virginia State Police special agent, allegedly reaching speeds of 115 miles per hour. Just south of Harrisonburg, he "pinballed" between a tractor trailer and a pickup truck, and overturned in the median, where the car came to rest on the driver's side and Potter was arrested.
Newly filed federal court records provide insight into that dramatic incident. According to a Roanoke City Police Department report, on the morning of the car chase, a man, later identified as Potter, impersonated a Drug Enforcement Administration agent to get into a house, where he handcuffed two men, tied up a third with a shoelace, pistol whipped and robbed them. One of the men said he had seen Potter once before, getting lunch at a pizza place with a corrections officer he knew.
The documents do not explain how law enforcement knew to look for Potter or his car leaving Roanoke. When he was arrested, he was wearing clothes that matched the description of the robber's DEA costume. Officers also found a fake DEA badge, 388 grams of cocaine, two guns, and ammunition in his car. Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo that Potter admitted to a state court judge he stole the Roanoke men's drugs.
They add "his criminal conduct was akin to the type of violent assaults he has been previously convicted of (shooting someone in the head with a BB gun), [and] currently faces charges for elsewhere (strangulation)."
The defense wrote that Potter suffered from serious mental health and substance use disorder issues, which started to spiral in 2021 when his older brother was shot and killed in a murder that remains unsolved, and then his father died, too. They note his ACL was partially torn in the car crash and "subsequently completely torn" in the local jail, requiring surgery.
Potter pled guilty to cocaine possession with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm in furtherance of that crime. He was sentenced to nine years and seven months in federal prison.
