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Pizza the action! Charges dropped against Lucali owner and stabber

Pizzaman will be charged with attempted murder, too!
Photo by William Miller

Silence is indeed golden.

District Attorney Charles Hynes dropped attempted murder charges on Tuesday against famed pizzaman Mark Iacono and mob-linked Benny Geritano after the two refused to sing to a grand jury about the stabbing of the mozzarella maestro on Smith Street in April.

“They’ve been uncooperative,” said Hynes’s spokesman Sandy Silverstein. “They haven’t been talking the whole time.”

Geritano certainly wasn’t talking to us on Tuesday, even after a reporter shared the news of the dismissal.

“Get lost,” he said before slamming the door.

But Iacono’s attorney James Froccaro said his client was “very happy with the outcome,” added that the owner of the revered Henry Street pizza parlor Lucali has recovered from the stabbing, though he still needs a walker.

“His health is much better. He’s doing fine,” Froccaro said.

Geritano, 38, and Iacono, 44, were both charged with attempted murder after the pizzaman was stabbed in front of Joe’s Superette in Carroll Gardens on April 15. Geritano also suffered cuts to his hands in the scrimmage.

The spat reportedly started when Geritano accused Iacono of trying to steal his lady, 37-year-old Annette Angeloni.

On the Carroll Gardens block where the stabbing went down — where newer residents mix with an older crowd accustomed to knife-aided score-settling — neighbors were anything but shocked that the charges had been dropped.

“It was a personal matter, it might have gotten a little out of hand, but I think they handled it,” said one man, who identified himself only as a lifelong resident of the neighborhood.

Both Iacono and Geritano, whose family run Bagels by the Park on Smith Street near President Street, have known each other since childhood. Geritano is currently under house arrest for allegedly violating probation on an unrelated federal racketeering rap.

Meanwhile, Iacono’s Lucali was lauded by GQ magazine as the second best pizzeria in the country.