The last thing Sherita Harris remembers that night is her friend telling her the police were behind them and shooting. What happened next felt like a scene from an action movie: flashing lights, a screeching engine, and chaos unfolding at 60 miles per hour. Harris, a mother of five, was just along for the ride.

Sherita Harris was a passenger in a Nissan Rogue rental car, driven by her friend Sinatra Jordan. The two were in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, when Jordan allegedly ran a red light near State and Amite Streets. Moments later, Capitol Police activated their lights, signaling them to pull over. Jordan claims he complied at first, but then heard gunshots from the officers. Panicked, he hit the gas, speeding away as bullets shattered the car’s back window.

As the flashing light turned to gunfire, a bullet tore through the back window and hit Harris in the head. That’s when everything went dark.

Harris woke up three days later in a hospital bed. Her head throbbed. Her left eye felt wrong. “Why did I get shot?” she asked through tears. But no one had answers.

Police however, claim they were fired on first. “At that time, the back window of the fleeing vehicle started shattering,” Officer Jeffery Walker testified. He said he believed the driver was shooting at them. His partner, Michael Rhinewalt, returned fire.

Who shot first during the police chase?

Harris’s lawsuit tells a different story. According to her attorneys, the driver only fled after officers began shooting. Harris, they argue, was caught in the crossfire of what should have been a routine traffic stop. “Nobody even tried to check on me,” Harris said. “It just breaks me down.”

The chase ended in a crash on Lamar and Adelle Streets. The officers claimed the driver ran from the vehicle with “a black object in his hand.” They shot at him again. The object turned out to be a cellphone.

Back at the car, the officers made a grim discovery: Harris was slumped in the passenger seat, unconscious. She needed emergency surgery to remove bullet fragments from her skull.

“She still suffers severe complications,” her lawsuit states. Harris struggles with speech, memory, and movement. She’s partially paralyzed on the left side of her face and can only drink through a straw. She can no longer care for her youngest children.

Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, called for understanding. “When officers believe they’re being fired upon… their emotions are going to be high,” he said. The Capitol Police’s policies have since been updated to allow shooting into moving vehicles “only to prevent imminent death or serious injury.”

Harris wants more than policy changes. She’s suing for $3 million, citing emotional distress, physical trauma, and negligence. But she says money won’t fix what’s broken. “I’m never going to be me again,” she said. From a stray bullet to a courtroom battle, Sherita Harris’s story raises questions about accountability and the cost of high-stakes policing. Whether her lawsuit succeeds or not, it leaves a mark—just like the scar she now carries.

You can hear Harris tell her side of the story in the video below: