The sister of maraschino cherry king Arthur Mondella is blaming authorities for his suicide — because investigators failed to frisk the secret marijuana manufacturer during a raid last week, allowing him to lock himself in a bathroom where he shot himself with a concealed weapon.
Joanne Capece ripped into the investigators at the scene, saying: “The search was f–ked up. Why wasn’t he searched?” a source close to the Mondella family said.
“She didn’t hold back in telling the investigators that the search wasn’t conducted properly and because they dropped the ball, Arthur wasn’t disarmed and he was able to kill himself in [next to] a room full of cops,” the source said.
Capece believes the investigators — from the Brooklyn DA’s Office and the state Department of Environmental Conservation — should have been “more careful and diligent,” according to the source.
“They know he has a licensed carry permit, and they should have searched him and disarmed him,” the source added.
Mondella, 57, slipped into a bathroom and shot himself in the head Tuesday when officials found a secret doorway leading to a marijuana grow room.
About 100 pounds of weed and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash were seized.
Law enforcement sources said that frisking Mondella should have been a priority.
“Even if the warrant doesn’t explicitly say that you can frisk the subject, you still at the very least should ask him if you can pat him down,” one source said.
DEC investigators were in charge of the raid, over the dumping of waste from the cherry business, which is suspected of producing so much runoff that it turned neighborhood honeybees red.
But the Brooklyn DA’s Office also had been tipped off in 2013 that Dell’s Maraschino Cherries was a front for an indoor pot operation.
Mondella showed investigators at least one handgun he had stashed in a safe, but never told them about the pistol strapped to his ankle, sources said.
Mondella — who sued the city for a “concealed-carry” pistol permit in 1995 — was secretly armed throughout the hours-long raid, during which investigators even lunched on pizza as Mondella stood nearby, a source said.
Mondella family lawyer Michael Farkas confirmed that Capece spoke with DA investigators after her brother shot himself.
Farkas said he couldn’t provide details but said, “I have very serious questions for all agencies involved in the search about how this search-warrant execution was handled, including why he wasn’t disarmed when the search began,” he said.
The Brooklyn DA’s Office and the DEC declined to comment.