A brazen daytime shooting in downtown Montreal on Thursday was likely a mob hit — retribution for the slaying of the son of Vito Rizzuto, the reputed head of the Montreal mafia, crime experts and local media said.
Two men were killed and two others were wounded in the shooting at a high-end fashion store in the city’s old quarter adjacent to Montreal’s financial district, police said.
Two black men wearing bandanas over their faces were spotted fleeing the scene afterward, crime expert Michel Auger told public broadcaster Radio-Canada.
The owner of the boutique, Joseph Ducarme, is suspected of ties to a local street gang. One of the two killed on Thursday was his bodyguard. Ducarme himself — the presumed target — fled through a back door.
The shooting was likely payback for a hit on Nick Rizzuto Jr, who was shot to death in broad daylight last December, said crime experts and unnamed police sources cited by media.
His murder on Dec. 28 is still unsolved, but is suspected of being linked to a string of firebombings of Montreal cafes in the months before and after his death.
It occurred as warring factions apparently sought to fill a “power vacuum” left by a police crackdown on organized crime in the city, including the round-up of Hells Angels motorcycle club members and 73 reputed mobsters, crime expert Antonio Nicaso said.
Vito Rizzuto is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Colorado for racketeering, related to three underworld murders in Brooklyn in 1981.
Nick Rizzuto Sr, Rizzuto Jr’s grandfather, was arrested in 2006 in a police sweep, but has since been released.
Montreal’s Sicilian mafia is now facing new competition for criminal spoils from a Calabrese clan, street gangs and even Haitian groups, said Nicaso.
Each wants a piece of Rizzuto territory, possibly with the backing of the New York mafia, which has cut ties to the Rizzuto family after a falling out over the Brooklyn murders, Nicaso said.
There also exists a link between Ducarme and Nick Rizzuto — both once had a “business relationship” with a local developer, Antonio Magi, who relied on Ducarme’s hoods to recover unpaid debts, he said.
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