Gerard Pappa - Shootout With The Gallos

Shootout With The Gallos

He took an oath with the other Rampers, "... be together forever. Fuck the world. Fuck everybody, even the mob" and was said by Gravano to be full of "piss and vinegar." Later on, this would change but that was the attitude they held at that point in their lives. In the early 1960s, during the Profaci-Gallo civil war in the Colombo crime family had an encounter with Gerard, Sammy Gravano, James 'Jimmy' Emma, Joe Vitale, Tommy Snake and Lenny the Mole including a bunch of other gang members. They were hanging around in a bar at 79th Street and New Utrecht Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In the bar were several Gallo loyalists. They were a lot older than the Rampers and had an outstanding argument with member James Emma. They were heavily armed so Gerry and the others loaded up with firearms and headed back to the bar. Sammy later recounted the brutal gun battle in his autobiography,

It was a long bar. They were at one end of the bar and we were at the other end. It seemed like one of them went for a gun. We went for guns. There were a ton of shots thrown back and forth. It was like a cowboy movie. Totally unbelievable. Glass breaking, women screaming, things falling on the floor. One of the Gallo guys got hit, like eleven times. He staggers out of the bar and falls in the street. And lived, believe it or not. Another guy in the bar, an innocent bystander got hit in the foot. He went on his own to a doctor and never said nothing. The Gallo guy at the hospital don't say nothing, either.

He was involved in burglaries of local commercial franchises, fencing stolen goods, armed robbery and car theft.