Noman Sabit: Just hours after the ball dropped, New York City recorded its first murder and first fatal traffic crash of 2026, with two men killed in separate early-morning incidents in the Bronx and Queens.
Police said a 55-year-old Uber driver was shot and killed shortly before 7 a.m. Thursday near Morris Avenue and the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Officers found the victim, Issa Mbolo-Isac, with a gunshot wound to the head.
Mbolo-Isac “was a great human being, a very giving human being, a very religious Muslim, someone that only gave of himself,” Fernando Mateo, chair of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said.
Mbolo-Isac was on his way to a mosque following a long New Year’s Eve shift, and had just spoken with his brother when two men approached his vehicle and tried to force him out, according to Mateo. When Mbolo-Isac tried to drive away, the men shot at the car. The federation is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the shooters’ arrests, Mateo said. It’s the largest reward the organization has ever offered.
“His entire family is just mourning in a state of shock,” Mateo said.
No arrests have been made in the case. The murder in the West Bronx was preceded by a fatal hit-and-run in Corona.
Two men were crossing 102nd Street and 37th Avenue at 4 a.m. when the driver of a white SUV slammed into them, the NYPD said.
The impact was so powerful that one of the men was thrown into a parked vehicle and pinned underneath, police said. The man, whose name was not released, died at the scene.
The second pedestrian, a 24-year-old man, was taken to Elmhurst Hospital and is in critical condition, police said.
Investigators are searching for the driver, who fled the scene.
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