A man shot to death on the street in Brooklyn had learned to walk again as a boy after his foot was nearly severed in a gruesome trash compactor accident - and more recently was trying to turn his back on a life of crime.

Thomas Little's life story was once one of triumphant persistence only to be replaced by the too-common tale of a spiral into imprisonment and deadly gun violence.

 I understand that time is limited and at any given moment, anyone can run out of time,  Little wrote a federal judge just last year as he sought to make a fresh start.

Little, 34, first made headlines more than 20 years ago. After sliding down a Brooklyn building's garbage chute at age 9 to retrieve a superintendent's keys, his foot caught in the trash compactor and was left hanging by only a tendon.

 He did have a really hard life,  Little's longtime girlfriend, who only gave her name as Raquel, said last week after his slaying.  He's had to be strong since a very young age. 

After nearly a dozen operations, four years of physical therapy and the constant prayers of his mother, Little was able to walk again.

 I didn't want to be like an old man,  he told the Daily News at the time.

But not even the $2.3 million settlement his family got from the Red Hook building's owner was enough to spare him from circumstances that later led to a lengthy prison sentence - or a final confrontation that cost him his life.

About 12:30 a.m. June 6, Little was shot multiple times in the head outside an apartment building on Somers St. near Fulton St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, cops said. He died at Brookdale University Hospital.

Police have made no arrests.

Federal court documents reveal a troubled life, including an eight-year prison sentence for a robbery on Long Island.

The last time he saw a judge, in February 2025, he said he hoped to put that life behind him.

Little was arrested in Arizona for helping smuggle four Mexican citizens hidden in a car across the border into the U.S. After serving a 21-month prison sentence, he violated the terms of his supervised release in July 2024 in Idaho, when he was caught ridin

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