According to reports, a New York City woman who filed a $10 million civil suit against members of the Mafia organized crime families who managed to escape life sentences in connection with her son’s brutal murder decades ago, has died in a Brooklyn car accident.
Rose Gargano (70), a Brooklyn resident, was driving south along Third Ave. around 3:42 p.m. Friday when she lost control.
The 2020 Range Rover she was operating veered to the left, hopped a curb, and barreled into a stanchion for the elevated highway undergoing construction near 52nd Street, according to local news reports, citing the New York Police Department’s Highway Investigation Squad.
After receiving a 911 call, police and emergency responders arrived on the scene and discovered that she was unconscious at the wheel.
Gargano was taken to NYU Langone -Brooklyn where she was declared dead.
NYPD is looking into the possibility Gargano may have suffered a medical episode behind the wheel. The city’s medical inspector’s office will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of her death.
According to reports, the fatal crash occurred about two miles from Bay Ridge.
Jerry Gargano, one of Jerry Gargano’s sons, said that his family was devastated and grieving the loss of a loved wife, mother, and grandmother. “She will be greatly missed.”
Rose Gargano and her husband, Carmine, filed a civil lawsuit in 2018 against higher-ups in the Colombo crime family Joseph “Joey Caves” Competiello and Dino “Big Dino” Calabro, N.Y. Daily News reported. Both men were convicted of the 1994 murder of the couple’s 21-year-old son Carmine Gargano Jr.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors said Competiello was acting on orders from Calabro to “take care of it,” when he shot Gargano Jr. twice at a chop shop on McDonald Ave. before taking a sledgehammer to the young man’s 6-foot-2, 230-pound body, according to the newspaper.
Both men were willing to cooperate with the prosecutors in order to avoid life sentences for a variety of charges, including Gargano Jr.’s murder.
Competiello was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2014. Calabro was sentenced in 2017 to 11 years imprisonment
In 2017, the Gargano’s filed a $10,000,000 wrongful death suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
“I’ll never let it go,” Rose Gargano told N.Y. Daily News in 2017. “Those guys changed my life and my family forever.”
Neighbors told the newspaper that her husband died during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she is now survived by three sons.
