An elderly man who was killed on June 12 when a truck accidentally hit him at a Brooklyn crosswalk was a former mob boss.
Eighty-six-year-old Anthony Conigliaro was decapitated when a Department of Transportation (DOT) truck struck him, the New York Post reported on Friday.
The outlet said he had once been the “acting captain” of the Genovese crime family and one of his nicknames was “Tony Cakes.”
Genovese mobster ‘Tony Cakes’ ID’d as elderly NYC pedestrian decapitated by DOT truck https://t.co/rHoxrtjg4r pic.twitter.com/E70C4NY2Iz
— New York Post (@nypost) June 21, 2024
Video footage taken at the scene the day the incident happened shows official vehicles swarming the area. At one point, the video shows a white sheet draped over something in the roadway as authorities investigated the scene:
Conigliaro lived alone in an apartment on Dahlgren Place and neighbors said the father of two was always looking out for his neighbors.
The Post then detailed the man’s past involvement with the law:
Brooklyn federal prosecutors in 2005 accused Conigliaro — who toiled for years in the wholesale cake business, selling sweets across the New York City area and running an Italian ice and gelato stand in Little Italy, according to court documents — of being a soldier in the Genovese crime family.
Conigliaro worked as a loan shark for the Genovese, the feds said in a four-count indictment.
He eventually copped a guilty plea to a racketeering conspiracy charge, for which he received a 13-month sentence, court records state.
The outlet noted that in 1999, police arrested him for criminal usury and years later he was arrested in a grand larceny case.
The accident that killed him happened in the Dyker Heights area of Brooklyn, CBS New York reported on June 12, adding the truck driver was trying to make a right turn when it occurred:
Video footage shows the driver of the DOT truck sitting inside an ambulance. He appeared to be shaken and in disbelief over the accident.
Driver of city DOT truck appears inconsolable after killing, decapitating elderly pedestrian: video https://t.co/2F4DvnS1qr pic.twitter.com/r0UL9uA8g7
— New York Post (@nypost) June 21, 2024
A neighbor who lives nearby told the Post it is a dangerous intersection. “My children cross that street every day, and every day there’s cars flying by because there’s no turn signal. It’s a four way intersection. I’m horrified, I think it’s disgusting. They need to do something,” she said, adding she hoped officials would put in a turn signal as a safety precaution.
