PALERMO – Mafia hitmen shot and killed a Cosa Nostra boss, Giuseppe Dainotti, Monday as he cycled through the Zisa neighborhood of the Sicilian capital, police said. The slaying was the first Mafia murder in Palermo for three years.

 Dainotti, 57, released from prison in 2014 after 25 years, is suspected to have been murdered by enemies from within the infamous Sicilian clan. Police sources said his former henchman in drug trafficking, Giovanni Di Giacomo, had issued orders from prison to his brother Giuseppe, himself gunned down in 2014, to eliminate Mafia clan leaders who he believed were trying to take over the leadership of his criminal gang. 

 The Cosa Nostra member had been on the kill list since his release from prison in 2014, as it was suspected among various mafia circles that he was scheming to become the clan's big dog after the arrest of godfather Alessandro D'Ambrogio. The arrest of the former mafia boss upset the established order and disturbed the relative peace the mob gangs had enjoyed in recent years. 

 Dainotti was once fiercely loyal to Salvatore Cancemi, ex-head of the Porta Nuova faction, who later voluntarily turned himself into the carabinieri, becoming the first 'pentito', a collaborator with the Italian judicial authorities. 

 Witnesses said that the mafia boss was riding on his bike, when he was cornered by two gunmen on scooters, who then proceeded to shoot him in the head. 

 "I heard gunshots. It was 7:50... I thought they were fireworks... I looked out the window and saw a man on the ground who was loosing lots of blood from his head. No one was in the street," said a Tunisian woman living on Via d'Ossuna. 

 Shortly after he was shot down, a boy arrived on the scene shouting "uncle Peppino, uncle Peppino," witnesses said, and authorities were then alerted of the murder by onlookers. 

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