Ponies belonging to reputed mobster make a run for it during snowstorm
There goes the neighhhhborhood!
A pair of miniature ponies belonging to a reputed mobster made a run for it in snowy Staten Island Tuesday morning before they were safely wrangled by passersby and cops.
The runaways, named Blondie and Jewels, bolted from their home on Wakefield Road in the Eltingville section around 10:30 a.m. after their barn door was blown open by whipping winds.
The tiny trotters wandered less than a mile away – and just outside Robert Stasio’s home on Retford Avenue.
“I just looked out the window to see how bad it was coming down still and I see two ponies. I thought I was imagining things!” Stasio said.
Dad Blondie, 9, and his daughter Jewels, 4, belong to film producer Julius Nasso, who was convicted in 2003 of a Mafia-linked shakedown of action movie actor Steven Seagal.
Stasio, 50, jumped in his truck and trailed the ponies to make sure they didn’t become roadkill.
“I wanted to save them,” he said.
Stasio, who owns a painting business, caught up with them at Hylan Boulevard and Richmond Avenue, where he and uniformed NYPD cops managed to grab the ponies by their flowing manes.
“One of the ponies got loose from the cops so I grabbed that one and then it was dragging me a little bit in the snow,” Stasio said, adding that the horses were shaking from the cold.
Off-duty NYPD cop Anthony Parante, also pitched in, using yellow tow straps to secure the horses to a lamp post.
“They were very well behaved. I managed to put it on them like you would a dog leash,” said Parente, an 11-year veteran who was on his way to work. “Never would’ve thought I’d see two ponies in the middle of a blizzard on Staten Island.”
Parente’s good deed got him a special shoutout from Mayor de Blasio Tuesday at an unrelated press conference.
“I want to thank our cowboy officer for having quickly addressed the situation,” the mayor said.
Police safely returned Blondie and Jewels to Nasso, who said the galloping twosome are from Florida and trained to be around children.
“My major concern was that they wouldn’t hurt anyone or cause an accident but thank god they’re back,” said Nasso. “The police were nice, they understood. You can’t blame mother nature.”
Nasso served a year and a day in prison for teaming up with the Gambino crime family to extort Seagal, his former business partner.
The self-proclaimed pet lover denied he’s a reputed Gambino associate.
The self-proclaimed pet lover denied he’s a reputed Gambino associate.
“If any of that stuff was true, I wouldn’t be here right now and I wouldn’t be making movies. I never stopped making movies, one more successful than the other. If you want to write that crap, my attorney’s on standby,” Nasso told The Post. “I’ll come after you. You can write that. It’s libel. I’ll come after you with everything I’ve got.”
http://nypost.com/2017/03/14/runaway-ponies-make-mad-dash-for-freedom-during-snow-storm/
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