For months, Sylvester Zottola has been pursued by someone who wanted him dead. On Thursday evening, as night fell outside a McDonald’s on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, it appears that someone caught up with him.

Mr. Zottola, a reputed associate of New York’s Bonanno crime family, was believed to have been waiting in his S.U.V. to pick up his order at the drive-through window when he was shot dead.

In what a law enforcement official described as a mafia-style assassination, Mr. Zottola was shot once in the head and four times in the torso. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His assassin fled in what the police say was a gray vehicle, and remains at large.

It is the bloody conclusion to months’ worth of gangland-style assaults against both Mr. Zottola, 71, and his son, Salvatore, who through the 1990s and early 2000s supplied and serviced Joker Poker machines to mob-controlled gambling hubs, according to court documents.