The innocent New Yorker beaten to death by a madman in Brooklyn was a beloved fixture in the borough’s tight-knit Italian community known for selflessly offering help to those in need, stunned friends told The Post Thursday.
Nicola Tanzi’s boundless kindness would have even extended to the deranged killer who brutally attacked him for no reason outside the Jay Street-MetroTech station on Tuesday afternoon, according to the deacons at the two Roman Catholic churches he devoutly attended.
“Nicky had such a kind heart and was always a glass-is-half-full kind of person and he always had concerns for others,” said John Heyer, the deacon of Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen Roman Catholic Church in Carroll Gardens.
“So, I believe he’d help and forgive the person who did this and [would have] gotten them the help that they needed.”
Born in Italy, Tanzi, 64, moved to the Big Apple decades ago and lived a quiet, pious life, working as a security guard in the MetroTech Center area and regularly volunteering at church, friends and neighbors said.
“Nicola is for all purposes, one of the most congenial, friendly individuals that you could ever meet,” said Anthony Mammoliti, deacon at St. Athanasius-St. Dominic’s Parish in Bensonhurst, the other parish that Tanzi regularly attended.
“If you were his friend, that was something very, very powerful. He’ll do anything for his friends.”
His senseless death – allegedly because a characteristically kind gesture infuriated unhinged crook David Mazariegos, 25 – sent waves of shock and sorrow among Tanzi’s friends and fellow congregants.
Mazariegos allegedly confessed to disliking that Tanzi held a door open for him, prompting the psycho to unleash a brutal, fatal assault that continued even after the security guard stopped moving, sources and prosecutors said.
Tanzi had planned to retire next year and spend his golden years at Flowers By Emil, a shop near his home in Bensonhurst that he’d go to every morning to drink espresso, said the store’s owner, Carmine Arcaro.
“He came in here for coffee and went to work that morning,” he said about the day Tanzi died. “He never came home.”
The pair, who had been friends for 30 years, would chat in both English and Italian, although Tanzi’s Bari dialect often created confusion, Arcaro recalled fondly.
“He had a strong Italian accent,” he said. “I couldn’t understand a word he was saying and I’m from Italy.”
“He said he wanted to come help us out here,” the florist said.
Tanzi was the son of immigrants from Italy who settled in Carroll Gardens, an historic Italian enclave in Brooklyn, Heyer said. He never married.
“He was devoted to his parents until they passed,” the deacon said, adding Tanzi’s family came from Mola di Bari, a picturesque port city in southern Italy.
Tanzi’s super Michael Cangelosi, 65, said he lived alone, having moved from a nearby building two years ago.
“I used to see him coming from work,” Cangelosi said. “He was a pretty quiet guy, ‘Hi,’ ‘How are you?’ He was polite to everyone, the people in the building liked him.”
Several of Tanzi’s friends described him as a reserved person who’d open up once he made friends.
“He kept to himself, but he’d participate in community events,” Heyer said.
“If you were in his circle of friends or if you were here at church, you would see that he interacted with everybody beautifully,” Mammoliti said.
“Once you broke through that initial wall he put up, he was a man of tremendous faith – very, very, very kind, very happy.”
Word of Tanzi’s death rippled through St. Dominic’s, where he volunteered as an usher and attended Italian Mass on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Mammoliti said.
The women who joined Tanzi for those services “are beside themselves with grief, disbelief, and anger,” the deacon said.
Tanzi also belonged to Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen’s congregation of Maria SS Addolorata, founded by immigrants from the town of Mola in Bari.
“He was very devoted to the Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows, and he would be there on her feast day in September, and he would carry the statue in the procession,” Mammoliti said.
Mammoliti said he last saw Tanzi two weeks ago during a Sunday Italian Mass, where his friend held the door open for him.
“He volunteered to be an usher to take up the collection, and to assist anyone to find their seats in the church, open doors for the elderly women, the normal good things you’d expect from people,” he said.
“If I had to sum up Nicola, I’d say he tried to live his faith … If he had survived the attack, I can assure you from my interactions with Nicola, in time he would have forgiven his assailant.”
