Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced Monday, Oct. 20, that a Bronx man was sentenced to 22 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter and other charges for fatally shooting a man and wounding two bystanders after an argument that began inside a Bronx Taco Bell restaurant in the Mt. Hope section of The Bronx.

 

“The defendant fired four to six shots at the victim and he was killed in front of his wife, and two innocent bystanders were wounded,” the district attorney said. “This was a senseless, vicious crime. I hope today’s sentence brings justice to the deceased man’s family and the survivors.”

 

Clark said the defendant, Edison Cruz, 28, of The Bronx, was sentenced on Monday to 22 years in prison and five years post release supervision for first-degree manslaughter, first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Rosenblueth. She said he was found guilty of those charges by a jury on July 2.

 

According to the facts presented at trial, on May 3, 2022, at around 12:46 a.m., Cruz was working in the Taco Bell Restaurant on Jerome Avenue in the Mt. Hope section of The Bronx when he got into an argument with David Scott, 31, who was a customer at the restaurant with his wife. Prosecutors said the couple left the restaurant, Cruz also left and was walking along East Burnside Avenue when Scott and his wife followed him, continuing the argument in front of a bodega.

 

They said Scott went into the bodega and came out with a hockey stick. Prosecutors said Cruz then pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot Scott four to six times. They said a male bystander was also shot in the bicep and a female bystander was shot in the abdomen during the incident but fortunately, both survived. They said Cruz put the gun in garbage bag, placed the bag in a trash can, and went back to work, and the NYPD later recovered the gun.

 

The case was prosecuted by John Miras, senior homicide counsel with the homicide bureau, and Assistant District Attorney Rashad Mujumder of trial bureau 30 under the supervision of Burim Namani, deputy chief of the homicide bureau, Christine Scaccia, chief of the homicide bureau, and under the overall supervision of James Brennan, deputy chief of the trial division, and Theresa Gottlieb, chief of the trial division.

 

Clark thanked NYPD Detectives Dominic Robinson of the Bronx homicide squad and Orlando Colon formerly of the 46^th Precinct for their work on the case.