The man shot to death in a Pierrefonds parking lot on Monday morning was Andrew Scoppa, an alleged influential figure in the Montreal Mafia, police sources tell Radio-Canada.
The shooting happened shortly after 8 a.m. Monday in the parking lot of a strip mall on St-Jean Boulevard near Harry Worth Street.
Const. Raphaël Bergeron said the Montreal police major crimes unit is investigating, checking area surveillance cameras and speaking with possible witnesses.
The victim’s brother, Salvatore Scoppa, was shot dead at a Sheraton Hotel in Laval last May.
The body was found in a strip mall parking lot. (Jay Turnbull/CBC)
An employee of a gym in the strip mall told CBC News he saw the victim shortly before 8 a.m.
“I noticed the victim in his car because that’s his usual routine — waiting in his car for me to come open up the gym,” he said.
“I went upstairs to open the gym. When I got inside the gym, I heard two bangs. I thought it was construction because we are in a building that’s under construction right now.”
A few minutes later, the gym employee noticed people were gathering outside so he went outside to investigate and saw the man with serious injuries to his head.
No suspects have been arrested.
Earlier this month, Quebec provincial police arrested four people who were allegedly involved with homicides connected to organized crime.
At that time, Sûreté du Québec Chief Insp. Guy Lapointe said the homicides were linked to a “power struggle” between the Sicilian and Calabrian clans of the local Mafia.
‘In the Mafia, blood calls for blood’
Antonio Nicaso, an expert on the Mafia, said Scoppa’s death is just the latest chapter in a long power struggle in the underworld, which emerged after the death of Vito Rizutto.
“In the Mafia, blood calls for blood.” said Nicaso in an interview.
After Rizutto’s death, Nicaso said, the Scoppa brothers fell out of favour with the family’s new leadership, steadily losing trust from the still-powerful crime family.
Nicaso said that the assassination of Scoppa is unlikely to end the power struggle between the clans.
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