Gambino crime family boss Frank Cali shot dead outside Staten Island home By Larry Celona and Ben Feuerherd March 13, 2019 | 11:01pm | Updated 031319mobhit10CS
17 Police at the scene of the shooting in Staten Island. Christopher Sadowski
The boss of the Gambino crime family was whacked in front of his Staten Island home Wednesday night, police sources told The Post.
Frank Cali, 53, was gunned down by a shooter in front of his house on Hilltop Terrace in the Todt Hill section at about 9:20 p.m., the sources said.
Frank Cali Frank CaliAFP/Getty Images The gunman pumped a number of bullets into Cali then sped off in a blue pickup truck, according to police sources.
Cali was rushed to Staten Island University Hospital North and declared dead, the sources said.
A 911 caller reported hearing six or seven shots at the scene, but it was unclear how many times Cali was hit, police sources said.
No arrests were immediately made and police were scouring for video and looking for witnesses to the shooting, police said.
Cali, a native of Sicily, became the de facto godfather of the Gambinos in 2015.
He was described by mafia watchers as the opposite of the exuberant former boss John Gotti because “no one ever sees him.”
“He was a real quiet old-school boss,” a police source told The Post.
Cali infused the family with a new crop of immigrant Italian gangsters and focused on the heroin and Oxycontin trade, sources told The Post in September.
He had just one criminal conviction: an extortion charge in 2008 for an attempted shake down of a trucker working at a proposed NASCAR race track in Staten Island. He did just 16 months in the prison for the conviction.