Ganesh Shenoy, 54, who fled to India after causing a fatal crash in Hicksville in 2005, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Just 14 days after the crash, Shenoy boarded a plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Mumbai, India, where he spent the next 20 years. In September 2025, Shenoy was extradited to the United States to face trial. Shenoy was seen smiling as he entered the Nassau County Courthouse for his sentencing. “You took away my hero, a man I respected,” Krystina Morrone, the daughter of slain driver Philip Mastropolo, told Shenoy. “I had to graduate high school without him, get married without him and have two children who will never know their grandfather,” she said, adding that her brother had leukemia. “My father worked two jobs so that my mother could stay home and take care of my brother, who had leukemia,” she said. “He is a man who deserves to grow old with his family.”“I’m deeply sorry to the family,” Shenoy said as he was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. On April 11, 2005, Shenoy missed a red light and slammed into Mastropolo’s car, causing it to slide 65 feet in the opposite direction. Shenoy was also injured, but when he was taken to hospital, he refused medical treatment because he knew he would be arrested. His passport was confiscated, but he left the United States. He was formally charged in August 2005, and Nassau County has been working to recapture him ever since. “For two decades, Philip Mastropolo’s wife and children have carried the burden of his loss and the burden of knowing this cowardly defendant was hiding half a world away,” said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. “They waited for accountability and for the day when Ganesh Shenoy was finally brought to justice. Today is that day,” Donnelly added. “When this defendant fled to India after causing havoc, he sought to evade the law and his responsibility. But justice knows no borders and knows no deadlines, and last year he was brought back to answer the charges he had long evaded. Now, a prison cell awaits him.”
