A New York clothing salesman was indicted on murder charges in the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn store owners, two of them Orthodox Jews.
Salvatore Perrone, 63, was indicted Tuesday by a Brooklyn grand jury after being arrested last week by New York Police on suspicion of murder. The victims were of Middle Eastern descent.
Perrone reportedly made incriminating statements during police questioning, Reuters reported. A duffel bag belonging to Perrone was found at his girlfriend's apartment and contained a firearm with his fingerprints and shell casings that matched those found at the crime scenes, a 12-inch kitchen knife with dried blood and two folding knives with seven-inch blades.
The latest murder was on Nov. 16 in the Flatbush store of Rahmatolla Vahidipour, 78, of Great Neck, N.Y., in suburban Long Island. Vahidipour was shot in the head and chest in his She She Boutique, and then dragged to the back of the store and covered with clothes, according to the New York Daily News.
Vahidipour, who came to the United States from Iran, was scheduled to attend the bar mitzvah of one of his nine grandchildren, according to the newspaper.
In August, Isaac Kadare, 59, an Orthodox Jew born in Egypt, was shot in the head and stabbed in the neck in his Amazing 99 Cent Deals store in Bensonhurst. A month earlier, Mohammed Gebeli, 65, a Muslim originally from Egypt, was shot in the neck and killed in his clothing store in Bay Ridge.
No motive was uncovered for the murders. If convicted Perrone could face life in prison.
