A drive-by shooting on a Laval highway just north of Montreal left Leonardo Rizzuto—son of the late Vito Rizzuto, who once led the Montreal mafia—with mild injuries.
Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police, closed the highway shortly after the shooting occurred.
“At 4:40 p.m., a vehicle was fired upon on Highway 440, near (Highway 13) in Laval. One person was injured. We don’t fear for his life,” SQ spokesperson Stéphane Tremblay said to the media.
Rizzuto’s car showed multiple bullet holes, with some on the window and others on the body of the car. The tires took major damage as well as pictures taken by the Montreal Gazette showed the rubber almost completely removed from the tires themselves.
Rizzuto managed to take his car onto the adjacent Highway 13 and pulled into a funeral home where police then arrived. As of 1:00 a.m., Highway 440 and Highway 13 were both still closed as police still hadn’t left the scene.
In 2017, a TV series called Bad Blood told the tale of the Rizzuto family from the early 2000s into the 2010s. 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 The Fifth Estate docuseries aired the episode “Death of the Don” which focused on the rise and fall of the Rizzuto family, detailing their history from the 1980s until the late 2000s.
Upon news of the elder Rizzuto’s sudden death in 2013, the Toronto Star called Vito “Canada’s most notorious mobster.”
