But after the arrest Saturday of a 24-year-old man who lives with his parents, it appears the old-school crime figure may have been the victim of an angry young man with a gun and a grudge, but apparently no mob ties.
Law enforcement officials said they are looking at the possibility that the accused killer, Anthony A. Comello, had a romantic interest in one of Cali’s female relatives, and that the crime boss had told him to stay away.
Comello’s arrest was in some ways a sign of the times in an era when the city’s mob clans have become accustomed to a smaller, less powerful role in the criminal and economic culture. Weakened over several decades by a campaign of prosecutions, the Mafia has become less likely to resort to violence — even as gun violence and mass shootings have become a common occurrence in the United States.
Comello, 24, was arrested at a home owned by his family in Brick, New Jersey, on Saturday and is expected to be returned to Staten Island this week, where prosecutors have prepared murder charges, according to a computerized court database.
Efforts to reach a lawyer for Comello were unsuccessful.
Detectives have a recording of the killing from a security camera outside Cali’s home, and Comello’s fingerprints matched those that were lifted from a license plate the gunman picked up and handed to Cali before opening fire, according to police.
Comello, a 2012 graduate of Tottenville High School, neighbors said, lived with his parents in the Eltingville section of Staten Island, about 18 miles from Manhattan.
“He would plow the snow for us,” said Victor Ujeck, a neighbor. “I’ve seen his parents numerous times — also very nice people.”
“I would never imagine he could have done this,” Ujeck added. “I was shocked.”
Didar Janid, 46, works in the Campos deli a few blocks from the Comello’s two-story home in Staten Island and said he has known Comello for about eight years. He would stop by every couple weeks to buy Marlboro cigarettes, Janid said.
“He was a little bit aggressive,” Janid said, adding “a little loud.”
But he was mellowing, Janid said, and the accusations he faces stunned the shopkeeper.
“I didn’t see nothing abnormal when I saw him,” he said. “I can’t think even that he could be doing this.”
From the start, the shooting bore few of the hallmarks of a Mafia assassination, which generally involves a team of assassins and multiple cars to make a quick escape and block possible pursuers. They usually play out in carefully selected locations, away from the victim’s home and family, where the killers can get in and out fast with as little scrutiny as possible.
But Cali’s killer drove his own pickup truck to his victim’s home in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island, a neighborhood of narrow winding streets filled with police surveillance cameras and license plate readers. The truck was then backed into Cali’s Cadillac Escalade, a collision that apparently knocked off the car’s license plate, police officials said Saturday.
He then rang the doorbell of Cali’s home, allowing the surveillance camera to capture an image of his face, police said.
Cali came out to talk, and after a minute of conversation, the gunman pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol and fired repeatedly into Cali’s body, mortally wounding him as he tried to crawl under his killer’s car.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.