Has The Mafia Gotten This Lame?
And this better not be like the drugs-support-terrorism scare tactic because David Chase isn’t buying it:
Posted: June 25th, 2007 | Filed under: Insert Muted Trumpet's Sad Wah-Wah Here, Law & Order, Staten Island, You're Kidding, Right?Looks like this “Beast” won’t be unleashed in Annadale this Fourth of July.
Police chasing after a man who launched fireworks off Woods of Arden Road late Saturday night say they ended up finding a pyrotechnics treasure trove inside the Lenzie Street garage of a reputed mobster.
The stash, which cops estimate at $8,000, looks like it could have come from the shelves of a toy store — dozens of brightly-colored boxes with names like “The Beast Unleashed,” “Fire King Returns,” “New Yorker,” “Midnight Monsoon,” “Screamin’ Meemie” and “Pyrotechnic Motherlode,” decorated with demented clowns, blue monsters and a robed wizard.
. . .
According to police, Frank Russo, 26, of the 100-block of Benton Avenue, was lighting “birthday cake” style fireworks at the corner of Woods of Arden Road and Lenzie Street at about 11 p.m. Saturday.
Three officers and a sergeant from the precinct’s Anti-Crime Squad — Officers Shaun Mortman, William Palmer Brian Laffey and Sgt. Andre Teterycz — saw one of the fireworks go off, and gave chase.
Russo ran down Lenzie Street, to the home of a cousin, 37-year-old Frank (Frankie Steel) Pontillo and led the cops right to the stash, according to police.
Russo and Pontillo ran into the house, through an open garage door, and when police showed up, they saw the fireworks boxes inside the garage.
Pontillo, a reputed associate of the Colombo crime family, is still on supervised release after a 1993 murder conspiracy and racketeering conviction, court records show.
Pontillo was part of a five-man hit crew led by John Pate who rented Hasidic costumes as part of an aborted plan to gun down William (Wild Bill) Cutolo as he entered a restaurant in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Police arrested both men and charged them with multiple counts of unlawful dealing with fireworks, and a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon.