NYC pizzeria owner hopes 8-year sentence for his teenage attacker helps him turn his life around

The owner of a Queens pizzeria stabbed trying to thwart a robbery said he was “satisfied” with the 8-year sentence his attacker received Thursday and hoped the 19-year-old culprit would learn from his mistake.

“It’s a fitting punishment for what happened, that’s totally understandable,” Louie Suljovic, 39, owner of Louie Pizzeria on Baxter Ave. at 82nd St. said. “I’m satisfied.”

He and his father stopped Supreme Gooding, 19, and his brother-in-law Robert Whack, 31, when they tried to snatch the purse of a 61-year-old woman outside their restaurant last March.

Cazim Suljovic, 69, saw the men stabbing and hitting the woman for her purse and ran out to intervene.

The victim was stabbed twice, Cazim got knifed 9 times and Louie was also cut up in the melee. Both men suffered a collapsed lung.

The father and son’s intervention put a stop to a weeks-long crime spree in which Gooding and Whack would target the elderly on the street and mug them, according to prosecutors.

Gooding was caught on surveillance camera laughing after shoving a 75-year-old woman with a cane to the pavement and fleeing with $2,500 of her money.

“Gooding was 18 years old when he did this crime, he’s now 19 years old. You’d hope he chooses a better life and not a life of crime,” Assistant District Attorney George Kanellopoulos said Thursday in the courtroom.

Gooding said nothing during the hearing, only stared forward looking at the judge.

During his sentencing, Judge Kenneth Holder, admonished Gooding for his recklessness before handing him 8 years in state prison followed by five years of supervised release.

“You will still be able to get out and make something of your life,” Holder said.

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Suljovic said he hoped that Gooding comes to regret his actions.

“Eight years is a long time and I hope he learns something,” Sulijovic said. “Early 20s is a huge part in your development and he squandered that away.”

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz was more pointed in her response to the sentence.

“We will not tolerate our neighbors being targeted by ruthless predators,” she said. “The defendant will now have to pay for what he did to these women.”

The pizzeria owner said that he was trying to put the attack behind him.

“I just been trying to move on with my life,” he said. “It was a traumatic time and trying to relive it is a hassle.”

Whack’s case is awaiting trial for attempted murder, assault, robbery and other crimes.