A Montreal real estate developer with known ties to the Mafia has been shot and killed, according to reports.
Sources confirmed to CTV Montreal that Tony Magi was shot and killed Thursday morning in the southern Montreal neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
Police say officers were called to the area at about 11:15 a.m. after witnesses reported hearing gunshots. Once first responders arrived, they found a man in his 50s with at least one gunshot wound lying on the ground near a garage entryway.
“It was bystanders who saw the man that was unconscious in the first place,” Montreal police spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant told CTV Montreal. “They thought that he fell from an upper storey, but when police officers made some verifications, they saw that he was wounded by a gunshot.”
Police say the man was taken to hospital in critical condition and died shortly after. Officers have cordoned off the area while they investigate the incident and plan to examine surveillance video from surrounding businesses.
Magi has been targeted in assassination attempts before. He was kidnapped in 2005 and in 2008, he was shot in his Range Rover while waiting at a red light. He spent weeks in a coma as a result of the shooting. Both cases remain unsolved.
Following the assassination attempt, Magi began travelling in an armored vehicle with a group of armed security guards.
"I see bodyguards coming in and out, armed vehicles, and I can't keep my kids in the front to play outside," one of Magi’s neighbours told CTV Montreal back in 2011. "You don't know if your kid is walking on the street and there's some bomb in a car."
Magi’s business partner, Nick Rizzuto Jr., was shot and killed outside Magi’s office in December 2009. Rizzuto Jr. is the son of mob boss Vito Rizzuto, whom Magi had at least one construction deal with in Montreal.
In 2011, Magi’s wife Rita Biasini was shot at multiple times in a brazen daytime attack. Biasini was not injured and hid at a nearby police station.
Two years later, a man with a gun was seen walking toward Magi’s home, but fled after seeing bodyguards.
With files from CTV Montreal and The Canadian Press
