Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos
Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos, 45 stumbled into the halfway house late last night with gunshot wounds to either the back or stomach, said Const. Wayne Patterson.
Peel Regional Police received a call around 10 p.m. with a report that someone had been shot at St. Leonard’s Place, a transition house for both homeless men with serious mental illnesses and ex-offenders.
“We do know what he had been in prison for but at this time we need to revisit his past as we investigate,” said Patterson.
Alevizos was sentenced in a Newmarket court to three years in prison last February for his role in a drug conspiracy, the last of 32 co- accused to be sentenced — without a single trial held.
Alevizos was part of a large police investigation that hampered the expansion of the Montreal Mafia into Ontario, shut down one of the largest Ecstasy vendors in Canada and sparked the recent arrests of some of the biggest names in crime.
In an interview last year with the National Post, Alevizos dismissed suggestions he stole any cash and said that he was only afraid of only two things in life: God and his mother.
He was once described by a witness as the "biggest man I've ever seen" and by police as a 6-foot-6 male weighing 460 pounds earning him the nickname “Big Gus.”
One of Alevizos' closest friends, Gaetano Panepinto, was tight with outlaw motorcycle gang members, mafiosi, and high volume drug dealers.
He signed on early with the Rizzuto organization, the powerful Montreal-based Mafia family, when it started moving into Ontario, which gave him tremendous influence in the underworld.
Police do not have any suspects and are asking anyone who may have witnessed the shooting to come forward.
Alevizos had a pulse when police arrived but his vital signs soon disappeared, police said. He was then transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Alivezos was an all-star for the Guelph Gryphons university football team in the late 1980s. He also tried out for the Toronto Argonauts, in a brief career in the Canadian Football League.
