Ganesh Shenoy, 54, who fled to India after causing a fatal accident in Hicksville in 2005, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Just 14 days after the accident, Shenoy boarded a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Mumbai, India and remained in India for 20 years.
In September 2025, Shenoy was extradited to the United States to stand trial. Shenoy was seen smiling as he entered the Nassau County Court for his sentencing. “You took away my hero, the only person I looked up to,” Cristina Morrone, the daughter of slain motorist Philippe Mastropolo, told Shenoy. “I had to graduate from high school without him, get married without him, and have two children who will never know their grandfather,” she said, adding that her brother was suffering from leukemia.
“My father worked two jobs so my mother could stay home with my brother, who has leukemia,” she said. “He was a man who deserved to grow up with his family.”“Sorry to the family,” Shenoy said after he was sentenced to up to ten years in prison. On April 11, 2005, Shenoy ran a red light and smashed Mastropolo’s car so hard that the car slid 65 feet in the opposite direction. Shenoy was also injured, but while being taken to hospital, he refused treatment because he knew he would be arrested.
His passport was confiscated, but he left the United States. He was formally indicted in August 2005 and Nassau County has been trying to get him back ever since.
reconnaissance
Do you think justice has been done in Ganesh Shenoy’s case?
“For two decades, Philip Mastropolo’s wife and children have borne the weight of his loss and the burden of knowing this cowardly defendant hid halfway across the world,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said. They waited for accountability and the day when Ganesh Shenoy was finally brought to justice.
“Today was that day,” Donnelly added. “When this defendant fled to India in the wake of the devastation he caused, he tried to bypass the law and responsibility. But justice has no limits or expiration date, and last year he was brought back to answer charges he had evaded for so long. Now a prison cell awaits him.”
