Member of Italian Mafia gunned down in Riviere-des-Prairies bistro

A member of the Italian Mafia has been shot to death at a restaurant in Riviere-des-Prairies.

Tonino Callocchia, 53, who survived another attack outside a Laval restaurant on February 1 2013, was attacked Monday for a second time. In the first attack, he was struck in the torso by several bullets but survived. This time he did not.

The attack took place at Bistro XO+ on Henri Bourassa Blvd. near L.J. Forget Ave. shortly before 2 p.m. Monday.

“One or several suspects went inside and fired shots at the victim inside the bistro. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene by the doctor,” said Montreal police spokesperson Raphael Bergeron.

The suspects walked in wearing ski masks and shot Callocchia in front of patrons, employees and a contractor who was there to install surveillance cameras on site.

“I was installing cameras. I went into the back to pass the wires and I heard like five or six bangs,” said the contractor, Carl Hamel.

“I thought it was either firecrackers or someone banging on the door. Then I saw one of the persons running out through the back door. Then the waitress was crying. And then I saw everyone else running out, so I kind of assumed that there was something really wrong, it was a shooting, so I got kind of nervous, so I decided to climb down the ladder and run out the back door also.”

The video surveillance equipment was not in operation at the time.

Callocchia was a relative of Roger Valiquette, a suspected loanshark who was killed in Laval on Wednesday December 18, 2013. He also had close ties to Joe Di Maulo and Moreno Gallo, who were both assassinated within the last two years.

Callocchia was also said to have sided against the infamous Rizzuto organization when former boss Vito Rizzuto was in prison.

Callocchia was sentenced to four years in prison in 1996 after being found guilty of laundering nearly half a million dollars through a currency exchange house at Peel and de Maisonneuve. He was one of 41 arrested in the 1994 Operation Compote police sting which also saw Vincenzo Di Maulo and Rizzuto lawyer Joseph Laguna hauled in.

Callocchia was described by the Parole Board of Canada as an active member of the Italian Mafia in 2002. At the time he was serving a combined 21-year sentence for misdeeds that went back as far as 1987, involving weapons, cocaine importation and operating a house of prostitution.

He was paroled in 2002 and was suspected of taking sides against Vito Rizzuto in a Mafia rift in 2010.

Callocchia was arrested in May 2013 and charged with making threats against a woman with close ties to Raynald Desjardins, who has been charged in connection with the murder of Mafia leadership aspirant Salvatore Montagna. Callocchia was reportedly enraged over a debt the woman owed to him. Callocchia had once been a close ally of Desjardins and Giuseppe De Vito, according to reports.

Police are looking for one or more suspects. Investigators from the major crimes unit met with witnesses who were inside the bar and near the plaza.

“We’re going to have to go through the information that we're getting from the witnesses, as well as the video surveillance that is surrounding the business,” said Bergeron

It is the 24th homicide on the island of Montreal in 2014.