Here is an article giving an account of Curtis Sliwa's testimony At John Jr. Gotti's trial
Sliwa's gripping tale of survival BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
When all had seemed lost, a whoosh of air gave Curtis Sliwa hope that he just might live.
He'd already been shot, once in the leg and again in the abdomen, after a masked gunman popped up from the passenger seat of the cab he'd just hailed, pointing a silver-plated .38 revolver at him.
"Take this, you son of a bitch," the gunman screamed.
The handles to the cab's rear doors had been ripped off and the windows were rigged shut. But as the yellow cab sped down an East Village street in the early morning of June 19, 1992, it turned violently, thrusting the Guardian Angels leader against a rear door. He felt a gust of air come from the front passenger-side window.
Using the back seat as a launching pad, Sliwa lunged for the window, elbowing alleged gunman Michael Yannotti out of the way.
"I felt that was my only chance or I would die in that cab," he told jurors yesterday at John A. (Junior) Gotti's retrial on kidnapping and extortion charges in Manhattan Federal Court. "I didn't have much energy left. That was it, do or die for me."
Halfway out the window, Sliwa felt a tugging at his belt as the gunman tried to keep him inside. Just then the bumper of a parked car caught his red and white Guardian Angels shirt and pulled him out, his head banging against the pavement, he testified.
"I felt like the straw man from 'The Wizard of Oz,'" Sliwa said.
Prosecutors say Gotti sent two thugs to silence Sliwa after the morning radio host made nasty on-air comments about his father following the Dapper Don's April 1992 federal murder conviction.
This time on the witness stand, Sliwa, wearing a three-button blue suit, was more subdued than he had been when first called to testify at Gotti's last trial, which ended in a hung jury in September.
"I had a lot of anger after 13 years," Sliwa said later, surrounded by a sea of red-jacketed Guardian Angels outside the courthouse. "That anger isn't there."
Gone were the confrontations with Gotti's first attorney, Jeffery Lichtman. At one point, Sliwa poured Gotti's current lawyer, Charles Carnesi, some water after Carnesi said he felt parched.
Under questioning, Sliwa, 51, was forced to admit that over the years he had staged a number of publicity stunts to get media attention for the Guardian Angels, founded in the late 1970s while the Brooklyn Prep High School dropout was working as a night manager at a Bronx McDonald's.
He said he once had his older sister pose as a mugging victim whose purse was returned to her by a Guardian Angel - $300 still inside. He claimed he'd been kidnapped and abandoned in a Jones Beach parking lot by a transit cop - a hoax he said he hoped would stop police from harassing his subway security patrol.
"It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life," Sliwa said.
Sliwa also claimed that as he lay bleeding a cop mocked him, saying "Look at Superman now."
But Detective Steven Hayden, one of the first cops to come to Sliwa's aid, said it wasn't cops but passersby who were making the comments.
Gotti's mother, Victoria Gotti, took another swipe at mob informant Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo, who testified last week that her husband had a secret family and a love child. She wondered why DiLeonardo was offered a plea deal of 17 years in prison after he admitted his role in three murders while her son was facing 30 for a kidnapping.
She begged off questions about the alleged infidelities of her husband and son. "I think there's going to be a lot of truths revealed in the next couple of weeks," she promised.
Originally published on February 28, 2006
____________________________________________________________
I don't know here. He cannot postively identify the two guys in the front seat, and after being shot in the leg and the stomach, at point blank range, he was able to "launch" himself from the back seat through the front side window? Hmmmm.
Don Cardi
