The Randalls and Wards Islands dock shootout occurred in the spring of 2008 when Pegorino crime family associates Phil Bell and Niko Bellic murdered several Russian Mafia mobsters at the docks of Randalls and Wards Islands, New York City before stealing a speedboat carrying cocaine from them. Dozens of Russians were killed in the shootout.
Background[]
Phil Bell and Niko Bellic in 2008
The Pegorino crime family began a proxy war with the Ancelotti crime family in 2008 after the Ancelottis refused to acknowledge the Pegorinos as an official American Mafia family, and the strong Pegorinos decided to take advantage of the Ancelottis' weakness to take over their seat on The Commission. The Pegorinos hired the Irish Mob in Queens to disrupt the alliance between the Ancelottis and their Albanian Mob muscle, and Irish Mob hitman Niko Bellic murdered Ancelotti leaders Anthony Spoleto and Frankie Garone as they met with Albanians, dressing as an Albanian in the latter case; the two gangs went to war with each other. The Ancelottis decided to partner with the Faustin crime family of the Russian Mafia after the Albanians stopped running with them, and Dimitri Rascalov decided to sell a large load of cocaine to the Italians as a gesture of good will. The Russians used high-speed powerboats to move cocaine shipments from Miami, Florida to the docks of Randalls and Wards Islands, and one of their shipments arrived three days early. Pegorino associate Phil Bell was told about this by his boss, Jimmy Pegorino, and Bell hired Niko Bellic to assist him with stealing the cocaine before the Russians could sell it to the Ancelottis. The two of them drove to a parking lot under the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City, New Jersey, retrieving a truck that had been stolen from the Ancelottis; they planned to use it as a "Trojan horse", picking up the cocaine at the docks while pretending to be Ancelottis.
Shootout[]
Bellic and Bell escaping on a speedboat with the cocaine
The two men drove across the George Washington Bridge and into New York City, and they took the Triborough Bridge's offramp to reach Randalls and Wards Islands. Bell and Bellic approached the Russians at the docks and told Polikarp Y. Elmpt that they were there to receive the shipment; Elmpt suspected that something was wrong, and he had Vova Y. Zavrazhin force the two men out of the truck at gunpoint. Bell decided that they would have to take the drugs "the old-fashioned way", and he told Bellic to kill "the commie bastards". Bellic and Bell engaged in a massive shootout with the Russian mobsters inside of the warehouse, and all of the Russian mobsters were killed. Bellic and Bell decided to steal the cocaine-carrying speedboat, and they drove the boat up the East River towards a dock in Harlem. They gunned down the passengers of two pursuing Russian Mafia speedboats before arriving at the docks, where Bell offloaded the heroin into a Nonna Pina Italian restaurant truck driven by Gio Toppi. Bell and Toppi left in the truck, and Bellic took a taxi cab back to his Jersey City apartment.