Brooklyn restaurant with mafia ties mysteriously shot up
Waiter, there’s a bullet in my bolognese.
A mobbed-up Brooklyn restaurant may need to check its macaroni and gravy for shell casings after someone shot up the eatery’s facade early Sunday.
An employee arriving for work at Carroll Gardens’ Marco Polo Ristorante just before 8 a.m. found the front window and door riddled with six bullet holes, police said.
The 35-year-old trattoria is notorious with machers on both sides of the law — judges and attorneys regularly sup at the Court Street institution, but its mob ties run deep.
Wise-guy restaurant founder Joseph Chirico pleaded guilty to laundering money for the Gambino crime family in 2008.
Chirico copped to collecting $1,500 in extorted dough from trucking-company executive Joseph Vollaro on behalf of fellow Gambino soldier Jerome Brancato, but dodged jail time after getting character references from former Brooklyn borough president’s Howard Golden and Marty Markowitz — both of whom took donations from the mobbed-up restaurateur. Co-owner Marco Chricio, 29, said he believes his restaurant was caught in the crossfire of a larger gang battle on Court Street.
“You can see how the bullets ricocheted all over the place,” he said. “You can tell it was not direct. All the shells were across the street, and there were more than five. It looked like a battle. Hopefully, they catch the people that were fighting.”
Broken windows were patched with menus, but the front door still had a gaping hole blasted through it Sunday morning as the eatery prepared to open for business as usual.
A neighbor who heard the bullets said gun battles are rare in tony Carroll Gardens and suggested it was “unlikely” the shooters weren’t aiming for Marco Polo.
“I’d find it very unlikely that whoever fired the shots wasn’t targeting this restaurant — unless the target happened to be standing right out front. Otherwise, why else would this be the only storefront on the block with bullet holes in it?” he said, asking his name be withheld.
“Would I come back here? Yeah, I’d come back. The food here is phenomenal.”
Added another skeptical neighbor: “The thing about Marco Polo and some of the other restaurants is, we know their history. You always think twice.”
No one was injured in the gunplay, which likely occurred around 5 am, and investigators are still looking for a cause, police said.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/25/brooklyn-eatery-with-mob-ties-mysteriously-shot-up/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=pasteboard_app
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