The investigation into the attempted murder that Montreal Mafia co-boss Leonardo Rizzuto survived in mid-March continued to make strides on Wednesday afternoon as officers reportedly found the murder weapon abandoned by the shooter in Laval.
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Our Bureau of Investigation and the QMI Agency have learned that police officers from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) managed to flush out this pistol in the Sainte-Dorothée district, on the edge of Montée Champagne and near the intersection with Wood Avenue.
The suspicious vehicle in which the shooter was seated who fired in the direction of Leonardo Rizzuto, at the end of the afternoon of March 15, had also taken Avenue des Bois after the shooting, according to this that the SQ had reported that day. It was a black Porsche Macan SUV.
Melt of ice
The SQ and the National Organized Crime Squad (ENRCO), which are trying to elucidate this resounding attempted murder at the expense of the son of the late godfather Vito Rizzuto, have every reason to believe that it is the murder weapon.
Ballistic expertise should quickly confirm this hypothesis.
And if the police are really lucky, they will also be able to take fingerprints matching the shooter on the firearm in question.
According to our information, the police did not make this discovery following new information obtained in the wake of the arrests of two suspects over the past week.
Instead, it was the melting snow that prompted investigation leaders to return to do further searches along the escape route the suspects had taken after the March 15 shooting.
The police find therefore suggests that the shooter had simply got rid of his handgun by throwing it on the edge of the road through a window of the vehicle.
The police also believe that other accomplices aboard a second Porsche Macan SUV, but red in color, could have been involved in this crime.
End of a lull
Leonardo Rizzuto, 53, was hit by two of the eight gunshots fired at him from the suspicious vehicle that drove up to him, while he was in his black Mercedes SUV and was was driving on highway 440 west.
Thierry Laforce / QMI Agency
The lawyer by profession, who police still consider to be one of the two main leaders of the Rizzuto clan, managed to shake off his pursuers and go for help after coming to a standstill in the parking lot of a funeral home downstream.
The police investigation had led to the arrest of a first suspect eight days later.
Maxime Deland / QMI Agency
Mafioso Francesco Del Balso, a former high-ranking member of the Rizzuto clan who now revolves around the Hells Angels, was arrested at Trudeau airport and had his passport confiscated while trying to leave the country to Europe on March 23.
The main police thesis is that Del Balso, considered a specialist in extortion and illegal sports betting, was able to order this attempted murder in response to a shooting from which he miraculously escaped unscathed, in almost identical circumstances. , on November 7, 2022, also in Laval.
Then, during the night of last Friday, the police arrested a second suspect, Kevin Rochebrun, at his home in Mascouche.
Rochebrun, 32, associated with Montreal street gangs of red allegiance, is known to police for his participation in an armed attack from which another big name of the Rizzuto clan, Marco Pizzi, escaped unscathed in the summer of 2016 .
He had been sentenced to three years in prison.
Finally, last Monday, the police apprehended a third suspect, Steve Emmanuel Barthélémy, at his home in the Rivière-des-Prairies district. The 34-year-old man, with no criminal record, would have links with Kevin Rochebrun, according to the police.
The three suspects arrested so far have all been released without facing criminal charges, pending further investigation.
This coup at the expense of Leonardo Rizzuto marks the end of a lull of more than three years within traditional Italian organized crime.
After several years of bloody conflict, the Sicilian and Calabrian factions of the Montreal mafia had apparently buried the hatchet since the murders of the Salvatore brothers and Andrew Scoppa, two clan leaders who were shot dead during the year 2019 and that the police have identified them as rivals of the Rizzuto clan.
It was the first time that Leonardo Rizzuto was targeted in an armed attack, he who lost his brother Nick Jr. and his grandfather Nicolo, shot dead in December 2009 and November 2010 respectively, as well as his uncle Paolo Renda, who disappeared in May 2010 following a kidnapping and alleged victim of a homicide.