A member of the Hells Angels was arrested Wednesday evening in Montreal, just after going with other color bearers of the biker gang to the funeral home where the remains of the controversial mafioso Francesco Del Balso were exposed, shot dead last week.
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Michel Lamontagne, a member of the Hells of the Montreal chapter, was arrested around 9:30 p.m. by investigators from the National Organized Crime Squad (ENRCO) and police officers from the Tactical Intervention Group of the Sûreté du Québec, a learned from our Bureau of Investigation and the QMI Agency.
Photo archives, QMI AGENCY (Maxime Deland)
The 46-year-old Hells was in a vehicle with at least one other biker in front of Café Milano, rue Jarry Est, in the Little Italy district.
Michel Lamontagne was intercepted in front of a restaurant in Little Italy, rue Jarry Est.
Courtesy picture
The ENRCO had a search warrant to seize his cell phones, on the sidelines of a major drug investigation targeting no less than five influential members of the Hells of the Montreal chapter, including the alleged number one of the band, Martin Robert.
Lamontagne is not charged with anything at this time, but authorities are trying to amass enough evidence in the event that criminal charges are filed against him and other Hells from the Montreal chapter suspected of being involved in a lucrative narcotics trafficking network active in the city, on the north shore of Montreal and in the Laurentians region.
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According to our sources, at least three other Hells color bearers from the Montreal chapter had previously accompanied Lamontagne to the Urgel-Bourgie funeral home to pay their respects before the remains of their former business partner Francesco Del Balso, who was considered a close friend of Martin Robert.
The funeral of the 53-year-old Laval mafioso is also being held this Thursday in a church in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough.
Mafioso Francesco Del Balso, shot on June 5, 2023.
Photo taken from the obituary
ambush
This courtesy visit from the Hells is sure to fuel discussion and speculation, both in the police community and in the underworld.
It is that according to one of the hypotheses considered by the police, the Hells would themselves have lured Del Balso into an ambush, on June 5, by summoning him to a meeting in a training center in Dorval in front of which the boiling mafioso was riddled with bullets by a shooter who is still running.
According to our information, Del Balso would have met no one there other than the Hells Martin Robert in the minutes which preceded the murder.
However, sources tell us that the Hells claim to anyone who will listen that they have nothing to do with the assassination of this former lieutenant of the Rizzuto clan.
murder contract
Del Balso’s head had been the subject of a murder contract worth a quarter of a million dollars since the attempted murder in which Leonardo Rizzuto, the alleged co-leader of the Montreal mob and son of late godfather Vito Rizzuto was shot and wounded on March 15 in Laval.
Both the police and the Rizzuto clan suspected Del Balso of having ordered this attack in retaliation for a shooting from which the latter had escaped unscathed in November 2022 and another attempted murder at his expense last winter. .
Moreover, Del Balso knew he was in danger since he had tried in vain to flee the country at the end of March, but the SQ police officers had arrested him at Trudeau airport while confiscating his passport.
In the investigation into the attack on Rizzuto, the police also arrested two suspects in addition to having found the murder weapon.