Justice Delayed in Bronx Parking Lot Murder trial

BY ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA & SAM STERN

The distraught family of Ronald Antonucci, a Bronx man who was bashed to death in a parking lot confrontation in March, sat in Bronx Supreme Court Thursday morning still waiting for justice after the trial date was set.

The 68-year-old grandfather was killed when Gjok Deda, 50, allegedly punched him in the face repeatedly for getting too close to his daughters as Antonucci backed his car out of a parking space in front of Stadium Ave. on March 9. Deda fled the scene but was arrested on March 23^.

Deda punched Antonucci “numerous times with closed fists,” said the criminal complaint. The medical examiner at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, where Antonucci died shortly after the incident, said the cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma to the head.

Deda was indicted on a charge of manslaughter in the first degree to which he pleaded not guilty in Bronx Supreme Court and faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. He is a native of Albania and also faces possible deportation to his home country if found guilty.

Deda sat stone cold in court this morning as he listened to his interpreter inform him about the October 26 trial date.

The two men were neighbors and both lived at 1110 Stadium Ave where the incident occurred. Deda, who is 6-feet-3-inches tall and weighs 220 pounds towered over the retired carpenter who only weighed 156 pounds and stood at 5-feet-8-inches. Antonucci’s family and fellow residents of the Bronx neighborhood were stunned by his sudden death.

Antonucci’s neighbor taped a note nearby that said “A terrible loss,” and that the grandfather “had a heart of gold, always had a kind word to say to everyone in his eye sight, a joke to pass on, and there wasn’t a dog that wasn’t his friend!”