Nicholas Gianquitti at the defense table in District Court, Warwick, with his lawyers, Mark Dana, left, and William Devine. Gianquitti is accused of fatally shooting Cranston firefighter James A. Pagano in a neighborhood dispute last month.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

Jim Pagano was angry.

His next-door neighbor, Nicholas Gianquitti, had just sworn at his children. His nephews, too. Over a stray tennis ball.

“He said that to you?” Pagano asked his daughter Adriana, after she reported the incident. “He said that to you?”

Pagano got up from the kitchen table and walked briskly to the raised ranch at 16 Daisy Court.

His father, Anthony Pagano, at the house for his 9-year-old grandson’s birthday party, trailed just behind.

Jim pounded on the door once. Twice. Three times. And then he turned to leave, with a loud admonition: “You made a good choice by not answering the door.”

The door swung open. “What do you want, Jimmy?” Gianquitti asked.

There were words.

“Don’t swear at my kids,” Jimmy shouted at one point. “Just don’t [expletive] swear at my kids.” Pagano turned to leave for a second time. And then, Anthony remembers, a last verbal jab from Gianquitti.

“Hey, Jimmy,” he said, making an obscene gesture, “[expletive] you.”

That was it. Pagano swung at his neighbor and tumbled into the foyer. Gianquitti stumbled a few feet back and down a short flight of stairs, still on his feet.

Then Gianquitti pulled the silver, .38-caliber handgun from his waistband. Pop. Jimmy ran down the driveway. Gianquitti pursued. Pop. Pop.

Pagano was down, crouched behind a white car. Gianquitti stood over him, pointing the Walther PPK semi-automatic at him.

And he said something. Anthony couldn’t quite make it out. “I got you now, Jim.” Or maybe, “You’re done, Jim.”

Or was it, as Gianquitti’s lawyer William Devine suggested in court yesterday, “Don’t die on me, Jim?”

Gianquitti did not fire again. Pagano’s sister, Jean M. Verdi, yelled at him to “get the hell out of here.” Gianquitti, who briefly served as a Providence police officer, walked back to his house. Pagano, a Cranston firefighter, died shortly after.

And a week after burying him at St. Ann’s Cemetery in Cranston, Pagano’s father, sister and nephew took the stand yesterday to testify at a bail hearing for Gianquitti before District Court Judge Elaine Bucci.

The hearing, which also included testimony from a 12-year-old neighbor and a Cranston police officer, is set to resume at 2 p.m. today.

The attorney general’s office plans to call three more witnesses –– a Cranston detective, the 911 operator who fielded the emergency calls the afternoon of May 18 and an official from the state medical examiner’s office, which found that Pagano died from a single gunshot that tore through his aorta, pancreas and liver.

The state’s goal: convince Bucci that Gianquitti should be held without bail pending a hoped-for indictment and trial.

Pagano’s nephew, Benjamin Shola, 12, took the stand first yesterday.

Shola and his family were frequent guests at the Paganos’ house, he said, for Thanksgiving, birthday celebrations and pool parties.

On May 18, Jim and his wife, Adriana –– who shares her first name with her daughter –– were hosting a birthday party for their son Louis, who goes by Louie.

Louie’s grandparents were there. Some aunts, too. And cousins. There were eight children, in total, according to the attorney general’s office.

Five of the kids –– Benjamin, Adriana, Louie and two cousins, Anthony, or “AJ,” and Christopher –– went outside to play baseball in the front yard with an aluminum bat and a tennis ball.

AJ hit a foul ball. And it lodged between the trunk and spoiler of a silver car parked in Gianquitti’s driveway.

Ben said he walked up to the car, one of three parked alongside the house, and dislodged the tennis ball.

“The curtain moved and I saw somebody’s face,” Ben said.

It was Gianquitti, who had complained to police, two years before, of balls bounding onto his property.

Gianquitti’s wife opened the front door, Ben said, and soon Gianquitti himself was downstairs.

Ben said it was just a tennis ball –– it hadn’t done any damage.

But Gianquitti, he said, answered with profanity: “I don’t give a [expletive] if it’s a hardball or a softball. Now move you’re [expletive] game up the street so you don’t ruin my [expletive] car.”

Ben told Adriana and AJ. He didn’t tell the younger kids. The group shifted farther up the cul-de-sac and played for a few more minutes before returning to the Paganos’ house.

Adriana reported the story. Jim set aside his salad. And in moments, he was out the door.

Anthony, who turns 73 this week, knew his son was upset. So he followed Jim, he said, to prevent a confrontation.

When the shouting started, he testified, Gianquitti beckoned with his index finger, “come in the house.”

Did Jim tell Gianquitti to “get the [expletive] out of the neighborhood?” Devine asked, in cross-examination. No, Anthony said.

After the swing, after Gianquitti stumbled down the stairs, Anthony testified, the former police officer reached behind his back and pulled out his weapon.

“I said, ‘Jimmy, he’s got a gun,’ ” Anthony testified.

Did Gianquitti tell Jim to “back off,” “get out of here” or “leave?” Devine asked. No, Anthony said.

Jean M. Verdi, Jim’s sister, was watching the confrontation from Jim’s front stoop.

She could not see inside Gianquitti’s house. But she saw her brother disappear into the house for a moment.

And within three seconds, Verdi said, she saw him burst out of the house, running past their father. She heard the first shot.

Then she saw Gianquitti charge past their father, chasing Jim down the driveway. Two more shots, punctuated by puffs of smoke.

Verdi scooped up a 5-year-old nephew, standing in a flower bed, took him to the house and raced back to her brother.

Her parents, Anthony and Rosealba, were tending to Jim, as Gianquitti hovered over them, gun still drawn.

Verdi told Gianquitti to “get the hell out of here.” He looked at Verdi, looked at Jim’s parents, turned around and walked away, she said.

Jim was gasping. But Verdi had to turn her attention elsewhere. No one could find Ben and AJ.

They had run from the house, it turned out, leapt two fences, asked a neighbor mowing his lawn to call 911 and hid in a shed.

“I heard he had a gun and I just wanted to be safe,” Ben testified.

Jim was in trouble.

“He kept saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ ” Anthony testified.

But the EMTs –– men Jim had worked with for years –– could not get to their friend right away.

The scene was not yet secure. The police had surrounded the house and dispatchers were on the phone with Gianquitti, trying to coax him out of the house, according to Officer Anthony Bucci, who testified yesterday.

Gianquitti eventually came out, hands raised, Bucci said. His wife and daughter followed.

Meanwhile, a handful of police officers pulled Jim to a spot of relative safety. The EMTs took him away.

Did you ever see your son again? asked assistant Attorney General William Ferland.

“Not alive,” Anthony said.

dscharfe@projo.com