The owner of a famed Brooklyn pizza joint once at the center of a mob war over the theft of a pizza sauce recipe was gunned down in front of his home Thursday night in a targeted hit, the New York Post reports.
(FOX)- Louis Barbati, 61, an owner of L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst was steps from his front door when he ambushed by a man in his 30s, wearing a hoodie, the Post reported.
Barbati was shot five times and screamed out for his wife as he lay dying with $10,000 in a plastic bag and a loaf of bread in his hands, the Post reported.
Barbati’s Italian immigrant grandfather founded L&B in 1939. The pizzeria is best known for its Sicilian pizza and ices and regularly appears “best of New York” lists.
L&B was once at the center of a Mafia extortion plot over a stolen sauce recipe, the Post reported.
In 2009, Colombo crime family associate Francis Guerra was accused of extorting the owner of a Staten Island pizzeria for allegedly stealing L&B’s pizza-sauce recipe. Guerra, related through marriage to another L&B owner, was acquitted at a 2012 trial.