A murderer out on parole got 10 years in federal prison Wednesday after copping to a pair of attempted Brooklyn store robberies in which he shot a cashier in the leg and slashed a clerk’s face.
Mitchell Bostic, 52, was linked to one of those stickups, a Jan. 4, 2023, heist and shooting at a store on Van Sinderen Ave., through his distinctive red-and-white sneakers.
Bostic spent 26 years for the Nov. 24, 1992, shooting murder of a man in the Brownsville Houses on Sutter Ave., and since 2019 had been out on lifetime parole when he committed the robberies.
“You committed violent crimes while on lifetime parole for another violent crime, the murder of another human being,” U.S. District Court Orelia Merchant told Bostic Wednesday before handing down the sentence.
Bostic has already served 18 months of the sentence at the MDC Brooklyn jail while awaiting prosecution, and he still faces the prospect of being locked up on a parole violation once he’s served his federal time.
Mitchell Bostic, 50, spent 26 years in prison for pumping five bullets into a man in Brooklyn in 1992, and was released to parole in 2019. Four years later, he’s back behind bars — after his distinctive kicks tied him to the robbery and shooting of a Brooklyn store employee in January 2023, the feds allege. (US Eastern District of New York)
In the Jan. 4, 2023, robbery, Bostic walked into the store wearing a black puffer jacket over a black hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, a blue surgical mask and black-red-and-white sneakers, according to federal prosecutors. He demanded money from the cash register as he pointed a gun at the clerk, then, after the clerk stepped away from the register, shot him and fled.
A year later, on Feb. 4, 2024, Bostic walked into another store in Brooklyn and tried to steal household items, then whipped out a knife when a clerk confronted him, slashing her face and neck.
Federal authorities arrested him in March 2024, and when investigators got a warrant for data from a cell phone in his name, they found a photo of Bostic wearing the same distinctive sneakers about three years earlier that he had sported in the shooting robbery, according to court filings.
US Eastern District of New York
Mitchell Bostic, 50, spent 26 years in prison for pumping five bullets into a man in Brooklyn in 1992, and was released to parole in 2019. Four years later, he’s back behind bars — after his distinctive kicks tied him to the robbery and shooting of a Brooklyn store employee in January 2023, the feds allege. (US Eastern District of New York)
“The victims were innocent people just doing their jobs at local businesses when the defendant put them both in the hospital,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gibaldi wrote in an Oct. 7 letter to the judge.
Bostic took a plea deal in June, pleading guilty to a single count of attempted Hobbs Act robbery, and admitting to both crimes.
Bostic’s lawyer, Michael Weil, asked for a slightly shorter sentence, nine years, arguing that Bostic grew up in Brownsville at the height of the crack epidemic, that his mother was addicted to cocaine when he was a young boy, and that he fell into a spiral of severe opioid addiction.
Originally Published: October 15, 2025 at 1:56 PM EDT