Man Gets 11 Years For Accidental Queensbridge Shooting

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — An upstate New York man received an 11-year prison sentence after a fight with his girlfriend in Long Island City ended with a stray bullet hitting a teacher walking nearby.

Middletown resident Snooze Brown, 23, pleaded guilty in May to attempted murder, assault and criminal firearm possession charges for the 2018 shooting, according to prosecutors.

Authorities found Brown in Nassau County several days after the incident and arrested him.

"I pulled the gun out of my waistband and the gun went off. It was an accident," Brown allegedly told law enforcement at the time of his arrest. "I bought the gun from a crackhead in August. If the gun comes back to other things before August, it wasn’t me. I’ll take five years for this."

Brown was arguing with his girlfriend in her apartment the morning of Jan. 26, 2018, when he started punching her in the face, prosecutors said. She ran out of the apartment and Brown caught up to her at the corner of 41st Avenue and 10th Street, where he pulled out a gun and began shooting at her.

A stray bullet hit a 28-year-old schoolteacher in the stomach as she was leaving the F train subway station two blocks away at 41st Avenue and 21st Street, according to the charges.

The woman went to a local hospital and was released later that day, the New York Daily News reported.