Guardian Angels Founder Shot in N.Y. Cab Ambush

Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder who has said he made enemies after “13 years of busting lots of guys,” was ambushed in a cab and shot Friday, authorities said.

Sliwa was shot in both legs and lower abdomen, but survived after diving out a window of the cab and summoning help, authorities said. After a five-hour operation, Dr. Leon Pachter said he expected Sliwa to make a full recovery.

Sliwa’s wife, Lisa, and Mayor David N. Dinkins, who visited Bellevue Hospital shortly after Sliwa arrived, said the Guardian Angels’ leader had been “set up.” Dinkins pledged to do all he could to find the attacker.

It was the second attack in two months on Sliwa. He was clubbed by three men wielding baseball bats in April.

Police said the gunman had ducked down in the front seat of the cab that Sliwa hailed to take him from his Lower East Side headquarters to a mid-town studio where he and his wife do a daily early-morning radio talk show.

The cab headed the wrong way down a one-way street, and the gunman popped up and fired twice, police said. Sliwa dived out a window and the cab sped away, Police Chief David Scott said.

The Guardian Angels were formed in New York in 1979 when Sliwa, a night manager at a fast-food restaurant, recruited 13 young men into an unarmed anti-crime patrol. They concentrated at first on discouraging subway thugs, and, although opposed by police as vigilantes, they gained public support. Sliwa claims to have 67 chapters in the United States and overseas.

Sliwa, 38, whose bravado and self-promotion ballooned the ranks of Angels, has said his Angel uniform--a red beret and T-shirt with insignia--made him “an immediate target.”

“There’s a whole new gang of drug dealers in Midtown,” Lisa Sliwa said when pressed about why Sliwa was shot. “Maybe it was something he said on the radio at some time.”