FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Brooklyn Gang Member Sentenced to 25 Years to
Life in Prison for Fatally Shooting a Man
Bullets Also Struck School Bus and MTA Bus
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that a reputed Brooklyn gang member has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison following his conviction for murdering a man outside a Brownsville bodega. Stray bullets struck a nearby school bus and an MTA bus, barely missing their passengers.
District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This defendant robbed a two-year-old girl of her father, devastated a family, and endangered the lives of countless others with stray bullets hitting two crowded buses. Today’s sentence holds him accountable for this despicable crime, and I hope it offers some comfort to the victim’s loved ones.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Jamel Dossie, 34, of Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was sentenced today by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Phyllis Chu to 25 years to life in prison. The defendant was convicted of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon on June 29, 2023, following a jury trial.
The District Attorney said that, according to the evidence, on November 19, 2019, at approximately 8:45 a.m., outside a bodega on Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn, the defendant shot and killed 32-year-old Francisco Bonilla, the father of a 2-year-old girl. Flying bullets hit a school bus that was carrying young children to daycare and went through the rear door of an MTA bus full of passengers. No one was hurt on those buses.
The evidence showed that the defendant, who was a member of the Blood Stone Villains gang, was looking for the victim at a bodega the victim used to frequent. Surveillance videos captured the defendant in the moments before, during and after the murder. Specifically, the video showed him wearing a red baseball cap in the moments before the murder. Footage then tracked the defendant as he hunted the victim down and opened fire at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Dumont Avenues. Finally, video tracked the defendant as he returned to a nearby building where he was seen putting a gun inside of a mailbox and celebrating the murder by dancing and laughing with two women in the lobby.
Another video captured him a short time later entering a fourth-floor apartment, wearing that red hat again, and subsequently leaving the apartment without the hat. That same hat was later recovered from the apartment with the defendant’s DNA on it.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Michael Diamond, of the District Attorney’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Matthew Stewart, Deputy Chief of VCE, and the overall supervision of Assistant District Attorney Alfred De Ingeniis, VCE Chief.
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