Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Alleged mobster breaks his own kneecap, sues feds

Reprints
Alleged mobster breaks his own kneecap, sues feds

He didn’t sleep with the fishes, but reputed mobster Thomas Gioeli claims a close encounter with a prison puddle put him on ice.

Mr. Gioeli, 65, aka “Tommy Shots,” is currently a guest of the federal prison system, having been convicted in 2012 of conspiring to kill three men. And it was during this time behind bars that Mr. Gioeli claims he was injured on Aug. 29, 2013 in a slip-and-fall accident as he was playing table tennis with a fellow inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

While going to retrieve a wayward ping-pong ball, Mr. Gioeli, who was awaiting sentencing at the time, alleges that he slipped in a puddle near the showers, which caused Tommy Shots to fall on his knee and fracture his kneecap.

Mr. Gioeli, who was later sentenced to 18½ years in prison, has filed a suit against the government in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

 

Mr. Gioeli earned his “Tommy Shots” moniker for surviving gunshots in a mob ambush, but he charges that the ping-pong mishap required surgery and put him in the hospital for more than 30 days.

 

Read Next