CLOSING IN ON PIZZA ‘KILLER’
Police are homing in on a suspect in the murder of the coowner of Brooklyn pizzeria L&B Spumoni Gardens after identifying him in damning video footage recorded near the crime scene.
The suspect was caught on camera walking down a street near Louis Barbati’s home in Dyker Heights just before the restaurateur was ambushed and gunned down in his back yard on June 30.
The NYPD released the video earlier this month and received several calls that eventually led them to the suspect.
“We’ve got a very strong lead in this case,” a police source said. “We’re taking a look at somebody.”
Barbati was carrying $15,000 in cash and a loaf of Italian bread when he was attacked during what cops have described as a botched robbery attempt.
The gunman shot him five times in the back, arm and leg — but fled without any of the money, law-enforcement sources said.
Police believe there may be more than one person involved in the robbery attempt because someone likely tipped off the attacker, telling him when Barbati would be arriving home with the large amount of cash.
The businessman’s wife told investigators that Barbati brought home that much money only a handful of times a year.
The suspect in the killing was wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt, lighter-colored shorts and dark shoes in the video-surveillance footage.
He also was seen getting in and out of his car near Barbati’s home and chatting on his cellphone before the restaurant owner arrived.
But while police have identified the man in the video, they’re still compiling evidence to pin him to the murder, police sources said.
Cops believe the fatal shooting was the result of a robbery gone awry, not a mob hit, despite the Bensonhurst restaurant’s ties to a 2009 Mafia extortion plot involving the pizzeria’s pie sauce.
In that plot, one of Barbati’s relatives by marriage, Colombo crime-family associate Frank Guerra, was accused of threatening a Staten Island pizza-shop owner for pilfering Spumoni Gardens’ sauce recipe.
“This does not fit the criteria of a mob hit,” a law-enforcement source said. “I think that is highly unlikely — unless the mob can’t hire good help.”