Rudy Giuliani claimed a grocery-store employee's attack on him felt like a gunshot. CCTV footage shows he was slapped on the back.

• Rudy Giuliani said he felt like he was shot when a grocery-store employee slapped his back Sunday.
• Giuliani suggested he could have "hit the ground" and cracked his skull if he hadn't been more fit.

Footage of what the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani called an attack that could have resulted in him falling, cracking his skull, and dying has emerged.

The 78-year-old Giuliani was at a ShopRite grocery store on Staten Island on Sunday when a man slapped his back. Giuliani had been out campaigning for his son, Andrew, who is running as a GOP candidate in the New York gubernatorial race.

Giuliani later called a radio show hosted by Curtis Sliwa, a former New York mayoral candidate, to talk about the incident. Giuliani said he had just exited the store's men's room and was caught up in a group of people "hugging" and "kissing" him when the man slapped him.

"I feel a shot on my back, like somebody shot me. I went forward, but luckily I didn't fall down," Giuliani said.

"The guy says words I can't repeat. 'You effin' whatever.' And then he goes on and on and on, yelling and screaming. He moves away, yelling and screaming things like 'You're going to kill women,'" Giuliani said, describing the man as a ShopRite employee who looked "either drunk or high."

"I mean, suppose I was a weaker 78-year-old and I hit the ground, cracked my skull, and died," the former mayor said.

Giuliani made similar claims to The New York Times. "My back hurts, but otherwise I'm able to walk and stuff like that," he said, adding that he had red marks on his back.

In a Monday morning video posted to his Facebook page, Giuliani said that when he got "hit on the back" it was "as if a boulder hit me."

"It knocked me forward a step or two. It didn't knock me down, but it hurt tremendously," he said.

Giuliani, a Republican, also said that the suspect called him a "woman killer" whose "party kills women."

The man "might have made a reference to the word abortion in there, but mostly it was killing women," he said.

Footage the New York Post released did not appear to show Rudy Giuliani lurching forward or falling after the man slapped his back. The video appeared to show Giuliani standing upright and pointing at the man.

—Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 26, 2022

The man involved in the incident with Giuliani is a store associate at a ShopRite location in the Charleston neighborhood Giuliani was visting. ShopRite's parent company said the man, identified by police as 39-year-old Daniel Gill, was "suspended pending termination" over the matter.

An NYPD spokesperson told Insider that police arrested Gill and charged him with second-degree assault.

The NYPD told Insider that the employee slapped Giuliani on his mid-back while saying, "What's up, scumbag?"

Police said Giuliani refused medical attention at the scene.

On Monday, Giuliani called for Gill to be fired from his job and prosecuted in order to make an example out of him.

"You're darn right I think he should be prosecuted," Giuliani said in the Facebook video. "A lot more of these crazy pro-choice people are going to start attacking people and they're doing it already."

Giuliani explained, "This has to stop."

Meanwhile, Gill was arraigned in Staten Island Criminal Court on Monday on misdemeanor charges of assault in the third-degree, menancing in the third-degree and harrassment in the second-degree.

A judge released Gill without bail.

Giuliani told investigators that the impact from the slap caused him to "stumble forward," resulting in pain and swelling to his back, according to a criminal complaint.

An attorney from the Legal Aid Society is representing Gill in the case. The organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider on Monday.