Reymon Rodriguez, of Hauppague, sentenced to 9 years in killing of Bronx teacher Kimberly Collins Midgette

A Nassau County judge sentenced a Hauppauge Bloods gang associate to 9 years behind bars for mistakenly killing a Bronx schoolteacher in a 2023 shooting in Hempstead.

The Nassau County District Attorney’s Office agreed to reduce the murder charge against Reymon Rodriguez, 20, to two counts of attempted murder in the second degree and second-degree criminal weapons possession in exchange for his guilty plea.

Rodriguez was also a defendant in a 103-count Suffolk County indictment of 31 Bloods street gang members and their associates.

Prosecutors said that a high-ranking member of the Bloodhound Brims street gang in Nassau asked a leader in the Suffolk chapter of the gang to send a group of young members to gun down a rival gang member.

Authorities said Rodriguez and another gang associate, Joel Badger, were given a gun and then stole a car to carry out the hit.

Badger and Rodriguez mistakenly opened fire on April 1, 2023, on a black car driven by Kimberly Collins Midgette, 44, a Bronx teacher, fatally striking her in the head, prosecutors said. Another passenger was struck in the arm.

Midgette was driving her 10-year-old daughter to the girl’s father’s house on Polk Avenue in Hempstead at the time. The child was in the back seat of the vehicle when her mother was killed, authorities said.

Rodriguez was originally charged as a juvenile.

On Wednesday, Rodriguez, wearing braids in his hair and dressed in a black button-down shirt and khaki pants, smiled to family members in the audience when he entered the courtroom.

He withdrew his not guilty plea and agreed to the lesser charges, waiving his right to appeal his conviction.

"He took responsibility for what he did," defense attorney Karen Johnston said. "He felt remorseful and he wanted to move forward."

Rodriguez also pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charges against him in Suffolk County related to Midgette's killing. He received 9 years in prison for that crime.

A woman who identified herself as his mother outside the courtroom denied that Rodriguez was a gang member.

"He wasn’t in a gang, but he was hanging out with the wrong people," she told Newsday. She and her family swarmed around a news photographer after the sentence hearing and threatened a reporter.