A Jamaican man who opened fire on a parked vehicle in a drive-by shooting which claimed the life of one man and injured another in New York in 2006 was sentenced to 37 years in prison on Monday.

After two years on the run, the accused was caught, The Queens Chronicle reports.

The outlaw was reportedly nabbed for a traffic violation despite an appearance on the television show America's Most Wanted.

The Queens Chronicle states that, Yahya Abdul-Aleem, 32, gunned down his victims following a fight with them. The report outlines that, after the fight ended, Abdul-Aleem went away and returned a short time later to shoot his victims as they sat in their car on August 6, 2006.

Abdul-Aleem drove to the intersection of Remington Road and Lakewood Avenue, where Stanley Pierre-Paul and Donald Niles, both 31, were parked. Niles was sitting in the driver's seat and Pierre-Paul in the front passenger seat.

rear passenger window

Abdul-Aleem fired four rounds at the vehicle - three hit the driver's door, a fourth round struck the rear passenger window on the driver's side and then hit Pierre-Paul in the head, killing him.

Abdul-Aleem fled to West Virginia in October 2008. When he was stopped by the State Police for speeding and didn't have a valid driver's licence or identification, he was taken into custody and fingerprinted, revealing that he was wanted on a murder charge. Abdul-Aleem waived extradition and was returned to New York.

He has been held without bail since his arrest in April 2009, was convicted last month of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and reckless endangerment.

He was sentenced to 25 years to life on the murder charge and 12 years on the attempted murder charge.

"I hope that the surviving victim and the deceased's family can find some measure of solace in the sentence - ironically, occurring on the day that the deceased would have celebrated his 37th birthday - and in the knowledge that the defendant will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars as punishment for his actions," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a prepared statement.