A drive-by shooting on a Laval highway just north of Montreal injured Leonardo Rizzuto, the son of the late Vito Rizzuto, who once led the Mafia in Montreal.
In a drive-by shooting on a highway in Laval, just north of Montreal, Leonardo Rizzuto – son of the late Vito Rizzuto, who once led the Montreal Mafia – suffered minor injuries.
ûreté du Québec, the provincial police, closed the highway shortly after the shooting.
“At 4:40 p.m., a vehicle was shot at on Highway 440, near (Highway 13) in Laval. One person was injured. We do not fear for his life,” SQ spokesperson Stéphane Tremblay told the media.
Rizzuto’s car had multiple bullet holes, some in the window and others in the body of the car. The tires suffered extensive damage and photos taken by the Montreal Gazette showed that the rubber had been almost completely removed from the tires themselves.
Rizzuto managed to drive his car onto adjacent Highway 13 and drove into a funeral home where police arrived. As of 1 a.m., Highway 440 and Highway 13 were both still closed as police had still not left the scene.
In 2017, a TV series called Bad Blood told the story of the Rizzuto family from the early 2000s to 2010. The show starred Anthony LaPaglia as Vito Rizzuto and the late Paul Sorvino – known to many as Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas – as Nicolo Rizzuto. Bad Blood is available to watch on Crave in Canada.
In 2011, CBC’s docuseries The Fifth Estate aired the episode “Death of the Don”, which focused on the rise and fall of the Rizzuto family, chronicling their history from the 1980s to the late 2000s.
Following news of the elder Rizzuto’s sudden death in 2013, the Toronto Star dubbed Vito “Canada’s most notorious gangster.”
