A gunman whose stray bullets
killed a Brooklyn mother of four and her pet pit bull
will spend 25 years behind bars after pleading guilty to the senseless shooting.
Namel Colon, 39, jumped out of a car on Dekalb Ave. near Franklin Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Jan. 2, 2022, and started blasting away at a rival. But his shots
hit an innocent victim,
36-year-old Jennifer Ynoa, and her pit bull, Blue.
Colon was set to go to trial
for murder
in Brooklyn Supreme Court last month, but he decided not to take his chances at the last minute, pleading guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a 25-year sentence. Judge Phyllis Chu handed down his sentence Tuesday.
Video showed Colon barrelling toward the front door of a smoke shop as a customer, believed to be his intended target, dove for cover.
Colon opened fire from the doorframe as Ynoa, who was shopping at the counter, tried to run, to no avail. Ynoa stumbled to the door, stepping in her own blood before she collapsed outside on the sidewalk.
Colon’s target ran off, and the gunman then hopped back into his red car and took off.
Blue died at the scene while medics rushed Ynoa to
Brooklyn Hospital Center
, where she died.
“I just want to apologize to the family,” Colon said during the brief sentencing proceeding Tuesday. None of Ynoa’s family spoke at the sentencing.
Police arrested Colon, who lives on the Lower East Side, about a month and a half after the incident.
Ynoa, a health attendant who was born in Queens, lived in Lafayette Gardens, a New York City Housing Authority complex across the street from where she was killed. Her boyfriend told the Daily News shortly after the slaying that she’d regularly visit the smoke shop while taking Blue for nighttime walks.
“This defendant brazenly opened fire into a store open to the public, killing a completely innocent woman and endangering everyone inside,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday. “Today’s sentence ensures he is held accountable for this outrageous act of violence and reflects the seriousness of the harm he caused.”
