Spencer Platt/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — A suspect was being questioned Saturday in connection with the fatal shooting of a reputed Gambino crime family boss, sources told ABC News.
Police were interrogating a 24-year-old man as part of their investigation into the killing of Francesco “Frankie Boy” Cali, sources told ABC News.
The man, whose identity was not released, was being questioned at an NYPD precinct on Staten Island, the sources added. He was taken into custody in Brick, New Jersey, by police and the FBI’s organized crime squad, the sources said.
He has not been arrested.
Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea is expected to hold a press conference Saturday at 4 p.m. to discuss this case.
Cali, who was allegedly the Gambino family boss, was gunned down in front of his Staten Island home on Wednesday night, reigniting focus on the mob for the first time in years.
The last mob boss to be killed was Paul Castellano, also the leader of the Gambino crime family at the time, who was murdered outside Sparks Steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan in 1985. That hit was ordered by John Gotti, who later took over the family until being convicted in 1992 of racketeering and Castellano’s murder.
Gotti died of cancer in prison in 2002.
Cali’s killing was captured on surveillance video, which investigators pored over to determine if the murder was sanctioned or not, fearing it could touch off a new “mob war,” sources told ABC News earlier this week.
The footage, which was grainy, appears to show that the suspect drive up to the home in a blue pickup truck, come to a stop, then suddenly reverse. The pickup truck then crashes into Cali’s parked Cadillac SUV, multiple police sources told ABC News.
The force of the impact knocked the license plates off the SUV, sources added.
Cali then came outside and talked to the shooter, police sources said. The two men shook hands, and then Cali turned his back to put the license plate inside the SUV.
That’s when the man pulled out a 9mm handgun and fired six bullets into Cali, police officials said.
A witness told police he saw an individual run toward the driver’s side of the blue pickup truck while simultaneously keeping one hand near his waistband, a source told ABC News.
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