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A Seaford man stabbed his parents in their throats inside their longtime Bethpage deli Thursday morning, killing both before walking out of the shop covered in blood, Nassau police said on Friday.
Det. Lt. George Darienzo said Vito Dambrosio, 30, arrived at A & A Italian Deli & Pizza on Hicksville Road about 9:11 a.m., argued with his parents in a back room, and then attacked them with a knife — first his mother, then his father.
Angela Pulisciano, 62, was found dead behind the deli counter, police said. Antonio Dambrosio, 70, was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died about 10 a.m.
Responding officers encountered Vito Dambrosio in the deli’s parking lot with blood on his hands and clothing, Darienzo, deputy commanding officer of Nassau Police’s Homicide Squad, said during a press briefing.
After a brief exchange, he was handcuffed and taken into custody without incident.
Darienzo said that moments before the killings, Vito Dambrosio had went into a local coffee shop, where he allegedly slapped a female clerk on the buttocks — a separate incident that was reported to 911.
Witness accounts from Thursday supported police timelines. Longtime customer Joe Boros, 97, told Newsday he walked into the deli, didn’t see the couple, and then saw their son come out from the back.
“He walked out and he said, ‘I stabbed my parents,’ and then he nonchalantly walked out,” Boros said.
Deli customer John Ioannou describe the deli owners as “an old fashioned Italian couple living the American dream.”
“They worked their butts off all their lives,” he told PIX11 News. “They’re here 24/7 — (to) give their kids a great life, and he was looking to retire in like four months.”
Dambrosio is charged with first-degree murder. Officials later said he will have a bedside arraignment at the hospital, where he is being treated for unspecified injuries.
Police said Vito Dambrosio had been partly estranged from his family following a dispute with a sibling, who obtained an order of protection against him just last month, the New York Post reported. He had been fitted with an ankle monitor since that order was issued.
Top: (main) courtesy photo, used with permission, and (inset) Vito Dambrosio (NCPD).
