Fourth blaze this year linked to organized crime

Laval arson investigators were called in Tuesday to investigate that city’s fourth criminally set fire apparently linked to organized crime since the new year.

Laval police were alerted to the latest fire before 6 a.m., after a passerby noticed flames inside the Romcafé restaurant on Des Laurentides Blvd. and called 911, said police spokesperson Constable Eveline Boudreau. Firefighters extinguished the blaze within 20 minutes but before they arrived, police officers noticed the restaurant’s front window had been smashed. Boudreau said sprinklers inside Romcafé apparently prevented the fire from getting out of control.

According to police sources, many known members of the Montreal Mafia frequented the restaurant, which was also firebombed on June 30, 2015. Vito Rizzuto, who died in December 2013, often visited the café after he returned to Montreal in October 2012 following his release from a U.S. prison. Marco Pizzi — who had alleged ties to the Montreal Mafia, was almost killed in Montreal last year and whose Montreal businesses have also recently been targeted by arsonists — has also been spotted at Romcafé.

On Jan. 5, a hair salon in a strip mall on Robert-Bourassa Blvd. owned by the wife of Carmelo “Mini-Me” Cannistaro, 46, a man who ran a multi-million-dollar illegal bookmaking ring for the Rizzuto organization, was damaged by arson. Four days later, a second salon owned by the same woman, on René Laennec Blvd., and neighbouring buildings were destroyed by arson.

Boudreau said there have been no recent developments in the investigations into the fires at the hair salons. But she said arson investigators recently determined that a luxury house on Du Commissaire St., in Laval’s Duvernay district, was set on fire on Jan 1. Boudreau said footage from security cameras at other nearby addresses showed that someone approached the house shortly before it caught fire. According to court and Quebec business registry records, it is the residence of John McKenzie, 46. At a 2011 liquor board hearing, police alleged McKenzie was a member of the West End Gang (along with his now-deceased father, James Patrick McKenzie) and a loan shark. A decision related to the hearing noted that McKenzie once admitted to police that he was a close friend of Richard Griffin, a member of the West End Gang who was murdered in Notre-Dame-de- Grâce in 2006.

Boudreau said no arrests have been made in connection with any of the fires.

DAVE SIDAWAY Police were on the scene of a suspicious fire at the Romcafé in Laval, on Tuesday. It’s the second time in 18 months that there has been a fire at the restaurant, a former hangout of Vito Rizzuto.