Guardian Angels founder testifies in NY Gotti trial

NEW YORK - The founder of New York's Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol testified on Monday against the man prosecutors say was behind a 1992 shooting in a taxi that left him with so many bullet holes he "looked like Swiss cheese".

Curtis Sliwa, a radio host known for criticising mobsters and tackling crime, took the stand in the racketeering trial of John A "Junior" Gotti, son of late mob boss John Gotti.

Among a litany of other charges in the trial, which started last month in federal court in Manhattan, John A Gotti is accused of conspiring to kidnap Sliwa after he criticised his father on his radio show. Gotti faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Sliwa, dressed in a dark suit but without his trademark Guardian Angels red beret, sat facing Gotti and told the packed courtroom how a masked man "popped up like a jack in the box" in the front passenger seat of the cab and shot him in the stomach 13 years ago.

With his shirt soaked in blood, Sliwa said, he desperately tried to open the door only to find the handles were missing. He shouted "Code Red" into his radio to notify other members of the Angels squad.

Sliwa said there were more shots, that he used the back seat as a trampoline to dive through one of the cab's front windows and that he remembered dangling half out of the vehicle with "the pebbles from the asphalt literally smacking me in the face". He was eventually thrown clear and survived.

Earlier in the trial, mob turncoat Joseph D'Angelo testified that Gotti offered him US$5000 ($7200) to carry out an attack on Sliwa, saying he "wanted to get personal" to avenge his radio comments.

D'Angelo, who drove the cab, said the attack was initially ordered from prison by Gotti's father, Gambino crime family boss John "Dapper Don" Gotti, who died of cancer in 2002.

Gotti's lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman taunted Sliwa in his cross-examination, making him recount various hoaxes he has since admitted were publicity stunts in 1979 and the early 1980's to promote the Guardian Angels.

Sliwa told how he rose to become the leader of the subway vigilantes group, which was were praised by rock group The Clash in their 1982 song Red Angel Dragnet.

"Your lies as you just testified were designed to generate publicity?" asked Lichtman, who more than once sent the gallery into snickers by quoting from Sliwa's heroic tales of crime-fighting that made media headlines, but were shown to be fiction.

- REUTERS