Freeport auto body shop owner fatally shot

The brother of a Freeport auto body shop owner who was fatally shot at work Wednesday said his brother was a dedicated family man who had loved working with automobiles since he was a child.

Christopher Mignone, 42, of Baldwin, was found shot in his shop, Aimes Collision, 68 Bennington Ave., about 9:40 p.m., Nassau County police said.

Police responding to a 911 call found Mignone with "numerous" gunshot wounds to the chest, said Det. Sgt. Greg Quinn, a supervisor on the case. Mignone died at 10:18 p.m. at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

Quinn said cops were interviewing the victim's family, business associates and employees, as well as downloading video surveillance from nearby cameras.

He said police have no one in custody, but he said the case was in its early stages and declined to say if there are suspects.

One neighbor who owns an auto shop near Mignone's said he saw Mignone having an intense conversation with another man in the afternoon drizzle before the shooting.

"I noticed he was talking to him in a very serious way," the neighbor said, though he doesn't know what was said in the parking lot behind Crazy Freddy's Sunrise Honda.

At the victim's Baldwin home, Michael Mignone called his brother a "great, great father and a great businessman."

He said the family lived for years in Baldwin, blocks from where Chris Mignone had been raising his own family. Michael Mignone said his brother had a wife and three children -- two boys and a girl.

When the two were boys, Chris would take apart the model cars Michael had built, he said.

"I was the builder, and he was the take-apart guy," the elder Mignone said.

As he got older, Chris Mignone worked at several auto shops before opening up his own place.

"It grew and grew and grew and grew," said Michael Mignone, 47. "He was self-made."

The shop is on a short side street between Sunrise Highway and the Long Island Rail Road train tracks, just west of the Meadowbrook State Parkway.