Former Hells Angel was targeted by gunman
Two men shot at shopping mall are the latest attacks over trafficking, online gambling
Former Hells Angels enforcer Paris Christoforou was one of the targets of a failed murder attempt at Sherway Gardens last week, the Star has learned.
Christoforou suffered non-life threatening injuries after a gunman opened fire on him around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday evening outside a coffee shop at the shopping centre near The West Mall and Evans Ave.
His longtime associate Mark Peretz was seriously injured in the shooting.
Christoforou and Peretz made the news a dozen years ago when they were each sentenced to nine years in prison for a botched 2004 gangland murder attempt that paralyzed Louise Russo, an innocent bystander and mother-of-three, from the waist down.
In the 2004 shooting, court heard they had been attempting to kill Sicilian mobster Michele Modica at a sandwich shop over an unpaid online gambling debt when Russo was shot by mistake.
Police are probing whether the Sherway Gardens shootings are connected to another shooting this month when a 35year-old man was seriously wounded while leaving a breakfast restaurant in Oakville.
Police are investigating whether those murder attempts are connected to a dissolving business partnership involving a member of the London, Ont., Hells Angels charter.
That relationship crumbled over allegations that the London, Ont., biker skimmed proceeds from an online gambling enterprise and invested the money in Muskoka real estate, without telling his partners.
Sources also tell the Star this month’s two failed murder bids are the latest in a string of more than a dozen unsolved violent incidents this year in southern Ontario, centred around a struggle for drug trafficking and online gambling revenues.
The online gambling business was once controlled by Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto, who died of natural causes in December 2013.
There are now more than a dozen violent unsolved underworld incidents this year from Woodbridge to Hamilton, including killings, explosions and arson.
In the Oakville attack on Aug. 4, the 35-year-old man was shot around 9:30 a.m. after he was approached by three men outside the Sunset Grill breakfast restaurant in a shopping plaza at Cornwall and Trafalgar Rds. A man from Montreal was arrested nearby while two other men are still being sought by police after fleeing in a black pickup truck.
When Christoforou was sentenced for the Russo shooting, court heard that he had a criminal record that spanned more than a decade and included four previous assault convictions.
At the time of the Russo shooting, he was bound by two prohibition orders and was on probation.
Court heard that Christoforou was Peretz’s “partner and head of collections” at the time of the 2004 murder attempt.