Endless Sentences 1: Bronx Cab Driver Shot 7 or 9 Times Testifies In Robbery Trial With Daughter in SDNY Gallery

This is the beginning of a series, or part of a forthcoming book, "Endless Sentences" - more here below the fold / paywall line

by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack

SDNY COURTHOUSE, May 16 –  Back in March 2018 then US Attorney Geoffrey Berman announced that "on March 17, 2018, Mario Powell called a livery cab in the Bronx then threatened the driver with a gun and demanded cash.  The driver handed over $23 in cash.  Powell exited the cab and then shot the driver seven times." 

  On May 16, 2023, Powell was on trial before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Paul A. Engelmayer. Inner City Press was there and covered it. 

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 The driver Jeffrey Cisnero Camacho, who survived, was on the witness stand. He said he had been shot nine times, and still has two bullets in his leg. He said the two police officers who helped him, Jennifer and Sean, were "angels." He cried. 

 In the courtroom gallery, his relatives including one of his daughters listened. On the other side, apparently family members of the defendant.  

Now, from Endless Sentences:

   Cisnero on the witness stand was crying. He said the cop who cut open his clothing with scissors recoiled when he saw all the blood. He was my angel, Cisnero said. A patron saint of gypsy cab drivers.

  In the courtroom gallery in front of Kurt Wheelock were four members of Cisnero's family, including one of his three daughters. On the other side, ten relatives of the accused shooter Mario Powell.

  Kurt looked over at them, to see gauge their reaction when Cisnero sobbed. Nothing. Impassive. Now it was their ox being gored, in jail since his arrest in March 2018, five days after the shooting.

  First the victim had to recuperated, after an induced coma. Then there was COVID. Powell had already served five now. But for shooting another man - the same age - seven or nine times, in the course of a robbery? Five years would be just the first course. Punishment if not remorse could eat at Powell forever.

  Or would the jury let him go? Cisnero said his shooter had an Afro, and now Powell had dreads. Could it be that easy? What about the face tattoo?

more below the fold / paywall line