TAMPA, FLORIDA: Two more alleged members of the infamous Mongols motorcycle club in Florida have been apprehended this week, making the total down to four suspects involved in the execution shooting death of a fellow motorcycle club member who they thought was a “snitch” informing on the gang to local law enforcement.
On Tuesday, October 17, Vincent Romanino, 42, and Joshualee Garcia, 33, were arrested in the fatal shooting of Dominick Paternoster, 46, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
They now face charges of being an accessory after the fact to first-degree felony murder. The former is being held at the Faulkenburg Road Jail while the latter is being held at the Pasco County Jail.
Where was Dominick Paternoster killed?
The victim, who was a member of the Raiders, an affiliate feeder into the Mongols of which the defendants are the members, was murdered in his Palm Harbor home near Tampa on April 27, 2022, authorities said.
“They shot them a whole bunch of times, about as dead as you can get,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said in a news conference when he announced an indictment in August last year against an initial suspect.
Paul Mogilevsky, 48, was indicted on a first-degree murder charge on August 26, 2022, and a fourth suspect, Dylan Pascale, 36, also faces a first-degree murder charge, deputies said.
What did Paul Mogilevsky’s attorney say?
Mogilevsky’s attorney, Roger Futerman, said in an email that he expects the case to go to trial in 2024.
“The expected length of the trial will be three weeks,” he said, addimg “No offers have been made by Mr Mogilevsky, and he has maintained his not guilty plea.”
What did the county sheriff say?
Gualtieri hammered the suspects and their gang at the August 2022 news conference, terming it an organized crime.
“They like to call themselves motorcycle clubs, but that’s nonsense because they are not clubs,” he said, adding “They’re thugs, thugs who commit crimes and kill people who they think cross them.
“Members of these motorcycle gangs are not kids,” the sheriff added.
“Both Paternoster and Mogilevsky are in their mid-40s, as are many of their criminal associates that are involved in this gang activity,” he continued.
What happened on the day of the murder?
The sheriff said Pascale provided a timeline of events on the evening of the murder during a recorded interview on April 29, 2022, allegedly telling detectives he and another person brought Paternoster home from Tampa and left him sleeping in his reclining chair.
However, officials said he lied about what transpired that night. Investigators found spent shell casings next to the victim containing Pascale’s DNA, they said.
The sheriff noted more than one gun was used, and more than one person shot and killed Paternoster.
The sheriff said the Mongols are a national group based in California. He called it a criminal racketeering organization, organized crime “in its truest sense,” he said.
They ride motorcycles and sell drugs, traffic in guns and engage in human trafficking and prostitution, and they exist to “do bad things to others,” he added.
The Mongols have a strong presence in Tampa Bay and are called 'one-percenters'
“They’re very, very different from everyday people who simply enjoy riding motorcycles on weekends and belong to true social motorcycle clubs,” he said.
“These people are not the people that you see out on a Sunday afternoon motorcycle ride. These criminal biker organizations are called one-percenters because they are one percent of the people who ride motorcycles and self-identify as a motorcycle club when they are really this gang of thugs who terrorize and commit crime,” he added.
Paternoster’s ex-wife, who shared three children with him, was left devastated when she saw the bullet holes in the chair “where his head would have been,” she told Tampa’s CBS affiliate WTSP.
She said he became a drug addict and got into the biker gang. “He took a turn for the worst and turned violent, and he never was that way,” she said, adding “It was kind of too late for him, I think.”