High-ranking mobster gunned down in Canada
Rocco was shot in his car in Montreal suburb of Laval, only few hundred meters from police station.
MONTREAL (AFP) - A high-ranking mobster was gunned down near his home outside Montreal early Friday, the latest in string of killings believed to be the result of a power struggle in Canada’s mafia underworld.
Rocco Sollecito, 67, was shot in his car in the Montreal suburb of Laval, only a few hundred meters from a police station.
He later was pronounced dead in hospital, Quebec provincial police spokesman Sergeant Claude Denis told AFP.
Another police spokesman, Franco Di Genova of the Laval police department told AFP that the shooting appeared to be "a mob hit."
Sollecito’s murder follows the death of longtime patriach Vito Rizzuto in 2013. Sollecito’s son, Stefano, is alleged to be the current head of the Montreal mafia, alongside Rizzuto’s son Leonardo.
Police video footage presented at an anti-corruption commission showed Sollecito receiving stacks of money from a local construction boss in 2004.
Both Stefano and Leonardo were arrested in police raids in November and charged with drug trafficking.
Denis said the Quebec provincial police organized crime unit has taken over the homicide investigation.
