Woodbridge shooting may have been a gangland hit

It’s organized-crime week in Toronto, apparently. On Thursday, the same day reports of possible mob infiltration into Toronto’s construction industry surfaced in the press, a man was shot and killed outside the Regina Café in Woodbridge. Today, the papers are reporting that the dead man is Carmine Verduci, an alleged mobster with ties to the ‘Ndrangheta, an Italian crime organization with international reach.

The National Post interviewed Verduci in 2011, after Italian authorities put out a warrant for his arrest. The paper’s description of that interview today is incredible:

When his friends around him in a café heard him say he was not involved in organized crime, they thought it was hilarious and spontaneously burst out laughing and guffawing.

He turned to them and curtly told them to shut up. Everyone instantly did.

So one could say Verduci’s connections to international organized crime were a bit of an open secret.

Possibly too open, as it turns out. The Star’s sources say the shooting was likely a hit orchestrated by Montreal’s Rizzuto crime family, whose patriarch died suddenly of “natural causes” in December. Experts believe the Rizzutos are feuding with several GTA crime figures. Safety tip: stay away from any cafés those guys happen to frequent.