An unhinged Staten Island man accused of gunning down three Brooklyn shopkeepers execution-style in separate slayings was found unfit to stand trial on Friday — but fuming relatives of his second victim said he’s crazy like a fox.
“The doctors unanimously found him not fit to proceed,” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alan Marrus said of Sal Perrone on Friday, adding that the psychiatric findings meant the 65-year-old could no longer act as his own attorney.
“Since the beginning, he basically used every reason to get attention and play the game to get off the hook.”
Members of the Kadare family were present in court but declined to comment directly.
Perrone — who was not produced in court Friday — was examined by a psychologist and a psychiatrist, according to new court papers.
“The psychiatric definitively concluded that Mr. Perrone’s ‘ambivalence towards defense assistance, his paranoia regarding court personnel and his rigid, repetitive manner of thinking’ all point to the presence of a psychiatric disorder,” court papers state, adding that Perrone’s behavior is consistent with either a delusional disorder or a paranoid personality disorder.
“The psychologist concluded that Mr. Perrone ‘appeared unreasonable in consideration of his legal planning,’ ‘unable to make informed decisions regarding his case or assist an attorney in preparing a defense,’” the papers state.
Perrone — who faces three murder raps for killing the shopkeepers with an illegal .22-caliber rifle inside their Brooklyn shops in 2012 — bizarrely told detectives when he was arrested that he was a CIA operative ordered to kill Jews by Arab men.
He will be sent to a state mental institution for more evaluation, Marrus said.
“You’ve seen him in action. So have the psychiatrists. They think he’s a lunatic. He’s impossible to talk to,” said Perrone defense attorney Howard Kirsch.
Perrone will be back in court Jan. 23.
