by Vinny Vella

Five years ago, Peter LaBella teased his first Bosnian customer at Bella Mia Styles, his South End salon. "I said 'What's the matter with you? Why did you move here? Don't you know how bad it is here?'" LaBella said Wednesday night, referring to the violence that plagued Franklin Avenue at the time.

"He told me 'You don't know where I came from; this is paradise.'" LaBella soon came to respect the Bosnians that had landed in Hartford while fleeing their country's bloody civil war as "hardworking, family-oriented" people.

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Source: http://www.courant.com/