A Mississippi woman alleges police shot ‘blindly’ into a car and hit her in the head
An eyewitness told NBC News that a Mississippi Capitol Police officer said “Oh my God, oh my God” after finding Sherita Harris in the car, shot in the head. Harris has filed a federal lawsuit.
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Sherita Harris says her life was wrecked by a police bullet that hit her in the head. Imani Khayyam for NBC News
U.S. NEWS
'Why did I get shot?': A mother seeks accountability after a police stop erupts in gunfire
An eyewitness told NBC News that a Mississippi Capitol Police officer said “Oh my God, oh my God” after finding Sherita Harris in the car, shot in the head. Harris has filed a federal lawsuit.Dec. 22, 2023, 1:07 PM EST
By Jon Schuppe
JACKSON, Miss. — The last thing Sherita Harris remembers before a bullet tore into the back of her head is a friend saying the police were pulling them over.
She woke up in the hospital three days later, her face swollen and mangled.
More than a year has passed since the Aug. 14, 2022, shooting. Harris says she struggles to see, to hear, to eat, to mother her children. At a news conference Wednesday announcing a $3 million lawsuit against Mississippi authorities, Harris said she still doesn’t understand what happened.
“Why did I get shot?” Harris asked through tears. “This changed my life forever. I can never be me, so money don’t cover it.”
Her search for answers and accountability led her to file the lawsuit in federal court in Jackson against the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, the Mississippi Capitol Police and two officers involved in a traffic stop that erupted into gunfire and injured her.
Harris was a passenger in a car the officers tried to pull over in downtown Jackson that August night, the lawsuit states. Harris’ lawsuit accuses both officers of excessive force and says they had a duty to avoid “shooting blindly into a moving vehicle.” They should have known, the lawsuit states, that it was unsafe and violated the Capitol Police’s policies.
Police accuse Harris’ friend and the vehicle’s driver, who faces charges of fleeing and aggravated assault on police officers, of opening fire first, records show. Police have not said whether any of their bullets struck Harris, who has not been charged with a crime. Her friend said in interviews with NBC News that he was not armed and police beat him during his arrest.
The state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that it had recently received a report from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation on the shooting and is reviewing it.
The shooting was the first of four involving the Capitol Police in the first six months of a new deployment in Jackson to help the understaffed city police department crack down on car thefts, drug trafficking and street violence. In addition to Harris’ shooting, two more remain under investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office, including one in which a young father was killed. The Attorney General’s office has already deemed one of the shootings to be justified — that of a woman lying in bed injured by an errant bullet fired by an officer chasing a suspected car thief.
Sean Tindell, the commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Capitol Police, declined through a spokesperson to answer specific questions about Harris’ shooting on Wednesday, citing the pending lawsuit.
In a June interview with NBC News, Tindell said his agency is “constantly trying to improve” the way officers respond to high-stress situations. If any officer “unjustly attacked any suspect or any citizen, I’ll demand accountability not only from a personnel standpoint, but if there was a criminal action that occurred, that the appropriate charges be filed,” Tindell said.
He also said that “when officers believe they’re being fired upon with a firearm, their emotions are going to be high, and the way they’re going to react is most likely different than they would in a typical arrest. I think all those factors have to be taken into consideration.”
The two officers involved in the Harris shooting had been hired by the Capitol Police less than a month earlier, personnel records show. The officers were allowed to return to active duty while the investigation was pending, Tindell said.
Harris, meanwhile, says the experience has left her damaged and ashamed.
“I didn’t even get an apology,” she said Wednesday. “Do I matter?”
Sherita Harris and her lawyer, Carlos Moore, blame a Mississippi Capitol Police officer for shooting her in the head in August 2022.Imani Khayyam for NBC News
Harris, a mother of five, says she is not the type to depend on anyone for help. The shooting upended that.
Harris said in an interview that, not long before the shooting, she had started a new job managing a cafeteria at a local charter school. She said she was proud to have found a career that would sustain her and her children.
On the day of the shooting, a friend, Sinatra Jordan, was driving a Nissan Rogue rental car that Harris had been using since her own car was damaged in an accident.
Harris said her memory of that night remains hazy, but she remembers Jordan telling her that police lights were flashing behind them.
The next thing she says she recalls is opening her eyes at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson with a terrible headache. A nurse and one of her adult daughters stood over her bed. She put her hands to her head and felt equipment that a nurse told her was to prevent swelling. She’d been there three days.
Harris had been shot in the head, requiring surgeries to remove the bullet and repair her left eye and ear, she said.
Harris said she remains partially paralyzed on the left side of her face. She struggles to chew food and can drink only with a straw, she said. Her left eye lacks peripheral vision and she cannot see well at night. Her short-term memory is diminished. She often gets dizzy. All this makes it difficult to cook, count, drive, work or care for her youngest two children, who are 8 and 10, she said. She has sent them to live with their paternal grandmother while she stays at a friend’s home. Harris said she rarely leaves the house.
“I’m used to being an independent woman,” Harris said. “So it takes a lot out of me to not be able to do anything.”
The shooting, she said, “handicapped me for the rest of my life.”
Harris’ lawsuit accuses Officer Michael Rhinewalt of shooting her; her lawyer, Carlos Moore, said he reached that conclusion from reading court documents. The police have not said who shot Harris.
The police’s only public account of the shooting was provided in court by Rhinewalt’s partner.
Testifying in a September 2022 hearing, Officer Jeffery Walker, a member of the Capitol Police’s street crimes unit, said he and Rhinewalt attempted to pull over the Rogue because it had failed to stop at a red light, according to a transcript of the hearing. Walker was driving; Rhinewalt got out and began to approach the Rogue in front of a Wingstop restaurant. The Rogue then took off, Rhinewalt got back in the car and the officers followed, Walker said.
At an entrance ramp to Interstate 55, “my partner yelled at me that we were getting shot at,” Walker said. “At that time the back window of the fleeing vehicle started shattering, and that’s when I first noticed the gunshots.” Rhinewalt, leaning out of the passenger side window, “returned fire, and I backed off of the vehicle to keep a safe distance and us from getting injured,” Walker testified.