CRANSTON — When Nicholas Gianquitti moved onto Daisy Court in 2005, he entered a model of quiet suburbia, where all the split-levels came with backyard fences and neat yards and where children played in the cul-de-sac.
One problem: Gianquitti seemed at odds with the neighborhood children.
Their balls were always bouncing across his lush lawn or hitting his polished car.
Gianquitti complained as much last year to a friend from his old neighborhood, Oakwind Terrace.
The kids’ balls “were always banging his cars,” recalled Ron Silvestri of his conversation with Gianquitti. “They were brand new cars and he didn’t like his cars being ruined.”
Gianquitti, a slight man who drew a disability pension for the few months in the early 1990s when he served as a Providence police officer, complained to his neighbors on Daisy Court as well. And parents there and on the adjacent cul-de-sac, Lily Drive, warned their children to keep clear of the man with the tuft of orange hair sprouting from his chin.
On Sunday, Gianquitti’s next door neighbors, James and Adriana Pagano hosted a birthday party for their young son. Some kids were playing in the street and, neighbors say, Gianquitti, who is 40, came out yelling and swearing at them when a ball struck his car.
Pagano, 44, a Cranston firefighter for 15 years who had been officially promoted to lieutenant just last week, rushed over to confront Gianquitti.
The confrontation led to punches and then, with children and others watching, the scene turned surreal.
Witnesses reported hearing several shots and seeing Pagano, lying in the street, mortally wounded. Many of his neighbors and relatives began calling 911. The time was around 3:15 p.m.
Yesterday, while a District Court judge ordered Gianquitti held without bail on a charge of murder, police investigators probed the dirt and leaves blown against the sidewalk outside Gianquitti’s home at 16 Daisy Court, searching for evidence and trying to piece together a neighborhood killing.
Law enforcement officials say Gianquitti, who like Pagano attended Cranston High School West, had been licensed to carry a concealed weapon since 1993 when he left the Providence police force after six months after suffering a knee injury.
Police confiscated several rifles and pistols from his home following the shooting. Cranston Police Chief Col. Stephen C. McGrath said investigators were still trying to ferret out yesterday whether Gianquitti had the .38-caliber handgun he allegedly used to shoot Pagano with him when the altercation began or whether he went into his house to fetch the weapon.
McGrath said some of the gunshots may have been fired from inside Gianquitti’s house and others from outside.
Pagano grew up in the Garden City section of Cranston and graduated from Providence College in 1989. After college, he served as an aide in former Cranston Mayor Michael A. Traficante’s office before joining the Fire Department in February 1991. He was promoted to lieutenant in January, taking part in a department-wide promotions ceremony just last week. Married to Adriana Pagano, a part-time hairdresser, he had a daughter and a son. He was an avid golfer and a big Red Sox fan, known for cooking veal and mushrooms at the fire station and laughing easily.
Sunday afternoon at Fire Station Three, where Pagano had worked for some 15 years before a recent promotion and transfer, Lt. Mike Procopio and Firefighter Ray Giguere heard the call of a man shot on Daisy Court and sped to the scene.
They did not know, yet, it was their friend. But they were concerned.
“We knew it was his street,” Procopio said, in an interview at the station yesterday.
Gianquitti, married with a teenage daughter, had retreated to inside his house by the time the police arrived. And with reports of an armed man inside, officers initially cordoned off the street, with even the paramedics restricted to the perimeter.
A family friend, Stanley Glick, said Pagano’s parents, Anthony and Rosealba, ran to their son’s side after the shooting. And McGrath said three police officers pulled Pagano behind a car so the paramedics could approach safely and take him to Rhode Island Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Police took Gianquitti from the scene without incident, the chief said, along with his wife and his daughter.
McGrath said the department has 15 officers from the detective division working on the case, including three from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is examining forensic evidence from the crime scene.
Part of the challenge, said McGrath, is the volume of witnesses –– dozens of them, many with varying accounts.
“We need to sift through all that,” he said.
There could be more to come. Detectives were making a second sweep through the neighborhood yesterday afternoon to find any witnesses they may not have been interviewed Sunday. And there is at least one member of Pagano’s family, reeling from the shooting, who has not yet been able to speak with the police.
Hospital staff reported one gunshot wound, but an autopsy scheduled for yesterday afternoon, could reveal more, McGrath said.
Determining the trajectory of the gunshot or gunshots that struck Pagano will help investigators determine where he was shot –– on a sloping lawn, for instance, or down a steep set of stairs.
Yesterday morning, yellow police tape stretched across the entrance to Daisy Court, partially blocking the view of the crime scene for the steady stream of curiosity seekers driving by.
Matt Gebhart, 19, lives at the corner of Daisy Court and Rutland Street, where his family’s backyard abuts the Pagano’s property.
Gebhart described Pagano as a “great guy, really family-oriented” who often hosted pool parties in his backyard during the summer months.
Gianquitti, on the other hand “was weird,” said Gebhart. “My parents told my younger brother to keep away from him.”
Gebhart remembered one incident in which a child’s ball went onto Gianquitti’s property and he refused to give it back.
A parent had to march up to Gianquitti’s house and demand the ball back. “Stupid stuff like that,” said Gebhart.
In May 2006, Gianquitti filed a formal complaint with the Cranston police of kids in the neighborhood playing with hardballs.
He wanted to get it on record, the chief said, in case there was damage to his property at some point.
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