Latest Lucali's Stabbing Motive: Love Triangle

The scene of the crime

Was the stabbing last week in Carroll Gardens over a woman? Sources tell the Post today that Benny Geritano and Lucali's owner Mark Iacono were fighting on Friday over the love of a 37-year-old greeting-card store owner. In fact, the knife fight that afternoon which led both men to be charged with attempted murder may have been the second fight of the day for the pair.

Reportedly the duo got into an argument earlier over the woman, Annette Angeloni, inside of another Carroll Gardens store. Geritano was allegedly upset because he felt that the married Iacono was moving in on his live-in girlfriend (according to the paper's source "Benny said, 'Stay away from Annette! She's living with me now!'"). The Post also says that Angeloni was the woman driving the black Lexus that Geritano initially fled the scene in.

Though the love triangle angle is what the Post is pushing, neither men (or their lawyers) is confirming it. Geritano told the police that the fight was over a debt that Iacono owed him. A person who lives across Lucali's also told the Post, "[Iacono] has a ton of girls that work in there, one prettier than the next, and I've never seen him fool around with any of them."

Meanwhile, neighbors aren't really sure how to respond to the daytime slashing. While older residents of the neighborhood aren't that surprised (one "described the neighborhood from the 1950s through the '70s as a "wiseguy" playground.") newer ones certainly are. A Lucali's patron told WNYC "I definitely was shocked because he seemed like a very nice guy, and my boyfriend and I would always go there and he was very personable. I would never associate him with anything like that."