A Staten Island man who shot at a taxi riding on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in 2023 and struck a pregnant passenger was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, the gunman, 37-year-old Mark Munoz, watched the victims — a 30-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, who was two months pregnant — get into a taxi in Sunset Park on the afternoon of June 26, 2023.
Munoz, who had apparently had an argument with the man earlier that day, tailed the cab onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in a dark blue Jeep. He pulled up beside the taxi, fired off several shots into the backseat, and struck the woman in the head.
The taxi driver immediately headed to NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, where the woman and her unborn child were both saved by trauma unit doctors. The male victim was unharmed, though a budget lodged in the car door next to him.
Munoz fled the scene and headed to Staten Island, according to the DA’s office, where he apparently holed up in a car wash for several hours. He was arrested almost a year later, on May 24, 2024.
“This was a terrifying and calculated act of violence carried out in the middle of the day on one of the city’s busiest highways,” Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. “The defendant showed a complete disregard for human life when he opened fire on a moving vehicle, striking a young pregnant woman and endangering countless others.”
The gunman pleaded guilty to second-degree attempted murder in March, and was sentenced in Brooklyn Supreme Court on May 1.
