Mafioso Antonio Pietrantonio, who at one time was part of the bodyguard of the late mafia godfather Vito Rizzuto, was the victim of an armed attack around 6 p.m. Wednesday evening in downtown Montreal.
Pietrantonio, 61, had just gotten out of his car at the corner of Queen and Ottawa streets when a vehicle with at least two suspects in it stopped alongside him.
“Two men got out of the suspect vehicle and there was an altercation. The victim suffered superficial injuries to his upper body. There was no transport to the hospital,” described officer Antony Dorelas of the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM).
These were witnesses who called 911.
One of the suspects was allegedly armed with a firearm.
Attempted murder, kidnapping, theft or other motive, this remains unclear and all hypotheses are currently on the table for SPVM investigators.
“At the moment the motive is unknown,” says Agent Dorelas.
Pietrantonio is nicknamed Tony Suzuki because of a car sales business he once owned.
In the early 1990s, he was sentenced to three years in prison in connection with the importation of 740 kilograms of cocaine seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) off the coast of Nova Scotia.
During the 90s and 2000s, he was considered by the police to be a member of the close guard of the former godfather of the Montreal mafia, Vito Rizzuto.
In the early 2000s, during the Colisée investigation, the RCMP suspected him of being the head of a mafia cell, but investigators focused their efforts on other suspects and he was not arrested by investigators from the federal police’s Joint Investigation Unit against Organized Crime (UMECO).
In 2009 and 2010, during a failed coup attempt against the Rizzuto clan, Antonio Pietrantonio sided with the rebel clans and was injured in an attempted shooting while leaving a restaurant on rue Jarry in Montreal, in December 2011.
Pietrantonio, who is suspected by police of being a drug importer, was one of the guests at Martin Robert’s wedding which took place at a lavish ballroom in downtown Montreal in December 2018.
According to our information, the police observed him on a few occasions with relatives of the biker and his associates in recent years.