NEW YORK — The first attack on Sally Daz came more than a year before his murder — a man he’d never met stepped up to him in his Bronx driveway, asked him for a job, then punched him in the neck.
The 71-year-old mobster, whose real name was Sylvester Zottola, operated in the criminal underworld — he built a $45 million Bronx real estate empire off his decades of work running illegal gambling machines for the Mafia.
But he had no idea why someone would take a swing at him.
He certainly didn’t think that punch — planned and paid for by his own flesh and blood, according to federal prosecutors — was the opening salvo in a campaign of violent attacks, culminating in his killing as he waited for coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru in 2018.
Federal prosecutors say the whole, messy plot was put into motion by his youngest son, Anthony Zottola, 44, who had designs on the real estate empire.
The Sept. 8, 2017, punch left Sally Daz with a bruise on his neck, a broken rib, and questions,.
“He was pretty shaken up. He didn’t understand why somebody would punch him like that,” his other son, Salvatore Zottola, 45, told a federal jury in Brooklyn. “He was wondering why it happened to him, and he probably just thought the guy was just mentally disturbed.”
Prosecutors say Anthony Zottola planned that punch a month in advance, setting it up with Bushwan “Shelz” Shelton, a Bloods gang leader he befriended, and paid $200,000 to rub out his dad and older brother.
Five more attacks — including the fatal shot — followed. Several other attempts never got off the ground because the schemers’ hit man of choice didn’t have the skills to get the job done.
Over the course of Anthony Zottola’s trial, which enters its third week on Monday, prosecutors hope to use text messages between him and Shelton to prove Anthony Zottola was behind it all.
His defense lawyers admit that he befriended Shelton, but pin the whole plot on the gang leader, saying the Bloods bigwig used and betrayed his confidence to enact his own plan to rob him and kill the old man. Shelton took a plea deal in August.
Shelton sent a wave of hired flunkies to do the deed, but initially, he tried to kill Sally Daz himself, prosecutors said.
On Nov. 26, 2017, he put on a ski mask, pulled up behind the mobster’s car in Edgewater Park near the Throgs Neck Expressway, got out, and started running at him with a gun, prosecutors allege.
Sally Daz was too quick, though.
“He put the car in reverse and made a U-turn and got out of there. And then he called 911,” his son Salvatore testified. His next stop was the 45th Precinct stationhouse, where he told police he escaped a kidnapping. He got a gun after that.
On Christmas Day, Anthony Zottola got in touch with Shelton and put another plan in motion — his sister, who lived above his father, was on vacation, and Sally Daz would be alone for a few days.
On Dec. 27, 2017, the trap was set, and Sally Daz almost died right there.
When he got home, he found a group of men waiting inside for him. They beat him, pistol-whipped him, cut his throat, stabbed him in the back and neck, took cash from his safe, and took his gun, Assistant U.S. Attorney Devon Lash, said in opening statements at Anthony Zottola’s trial.
An upstairs neighbor found the injured mob associate and called 911.
Again, Sally Daz survived.
Salvatore, who started playing detective because he felt the cops were moving too slowly, made a disturbing discovery when he went to his dad’s garage to review surveillance footage of the attack. “The DVR was missing,” he testified.
After he recovered, Sally Daz went into hiding, avoiding his usual haunts, staying in different houses. But the threat lingered.
One would-be hired killer, Ron Cabey, 32, kept the hunt going, but not before screwing up three attempts in the first half of 2018 to rub out Salvatore Zottola.
Once, on June 5, Cabey tracked Sally Daz to a house on Mayflower Ave. in Pelham Bay, but Salvatore was outside, patrolling the area, keeping his dad safe.
Cabey and his driver took off, and Salvatore followed, having recognized the bumbling hit man’s junky tan getaway van. He called his brother Anthony to the scene, and got into Anthony’s car, pressing the younger sibling to drive fast and follow the van, he testified.
“I said, ‘Anthony, we got him! Just drive faster. Drive faster!’” Salvatore Zottola recalled on the stand. “He wasn’t driving faster. He was on his phone, texting.”
A week later, on June 12, Cabey tried again about two blocks away, on Hobart Ave., but Sally Daz pulled out a gun, and fired a warning shot, Cabey testified. And his own gun didn’t work.
He and his driver, Himen “Ace” Ross, fled, but he was caught by police at a Manhattan taxi stand. Cabey’s role in the murder-for-hire was done and by that September, he started singing to the FBI.
“I’m not a rat,” Cabey insisted on the stand.
With Cabey caged, the getaway driver became the button man and shifted his sights.
First, Ross tried to kill Salvatore Zottola outside his waterfront Bronx home on July 11, 2018, shooting him in the chest, back, head and hands as he tried to roll away from the bullets, prosecutors allege. Salvatore survived.
Finally, on Oct. 4, death came for Sally Daz. Shelton planted a tracking device on his car two days earlier, and wheelman Alfred Lopez followed him, prosecutors said.
They saw their opening at a Bronx McDonalds, while Sally Daz waited for a cup of hot coffee, talking on the phone with his girlfriend, prosecutors allege. Lopez pulled up, and Ross opened fire, finishing the hit. Ross and Lopez are also on trial, and have pleaded not guilty.
“Done,” Ross texted Shelton, according to prosecutors. “Kopy,” Shelton replied, then a few minutes later, sent a text to Anthony Zottola, “Can we party today or tomorrow?”
Zottola quipped back that he was celebrating his son’s birthday by taking him to McDonalds and a movie, and said, “Thank you for being a great friend.”
Shelton’s reply?
“Hey, it’s like it’s your birthday today as well. LOL.”
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