“He showed me the house he wanted and by the time I look and look back, he had a gun to my head,” says an Indian Chief Taxi Service driver, 29, who is among 15 reportedly robbed by a lone gunman who has been posing as a customer.
Police on Thursday said that during the month of October, 2011, there were 14 reported incidents where taxi-drivers were attacked and robbed by a man armed with a handgun who entered their vehicles on the pretext of being a passenger. “The drivers were then held up and taken mainly to the Albouys-town and Sophia areas, where they were robbed of their valuables. On five of the occasions, the armed man took away the victims’ motor vehicles and used them to commit armed robberies on several females,” police said in a statement.
The Indian Chief driver, who asked not to have his identity revealed, said he could not recall the exact day of the incident two weeks ago, but he remembered picking up the suspect from the taxi service’s Cummings Street base, sometime between 2.30 and 3am. The passenger requested to be taken to Sussex Street and, upon arrival there, the driver was directed to a house where the man wanted to be dropped off.
The house served as a distraction for the unsuspecting driver, who was then held up by his customer and relieved of $21,000 cash and his Motorola Rokr cellular phone. The driver was then ordered to go into the trunk of the car, to which he complied, and the passenger turned captor got behind the wheel and “drove the car for about hour and a half,” This newspaper understands that the perpetrator drove the car with his driver aback of Lamaha Springs, then abandoned the vehicle.
The driver learnt the following day that the area in which the car had been abandoned could be accessed through the back of ‘C’ Field Sophia.
Having knowledge about how to open the trunk from the inside, the driver managed to escape. After emerging from the trunk, he said, he drove straight to the East La Penitence Police Station, where he made a report. He said the only injury he suffered at the hand of the perpetrator was a gun butt to the face.
‘Accomplice
to robbery’
For a 32-year-old Sheriff Taxi driver, the police added insult to injury when they held him for more than three days after he was robbed. According to the still upset driver, who also asked not to be named, he picked up a man sometime after midnight two weeks back on Dennis Street, Sophia. He recalled that the suspect told him “that his wife was pregnant and if I could take her to the hospital.” The “pregnant wife,” the driver said, was supposed to be waiting in an area in Sophia called ‘Black and White,’ a corner east of ‘C’ Field.
The driver said that he was directed by the perpetrator to a “dark corner,” where he was held at gunpoint and told to hand over his valuables, which included $6,000 and a LG Shine cellular phone valued at $35,000. He too, like the other driver, was then ordered to stay down in the back of the vehicle, a Toyota Raum. He was ordered to stay down or be killed by the robber, who the taxi driver said drove “round and round” and made stops before eventually stopping next to another vehicle. “I heard him speaking with someone outside, then he got out and went somewhere and then returned,” he said, adding that he contemplated getting out of the vehicle, but fearing for his life he continued to lie low. The robber returned and drove the vehicle back to Sophia, where the perpetrator made another stop, after which he got out, opened the trunk and ordered the taxi driver to “drive and don’t say a word, don’t even shout cause he’ll kill me.” The shaken driver complied and drove away, heading straight to the Kitty Police Station.
There, he said, he met a woman who had just made a report about being robbed, and upon seeing him she pointed out his vehicle to the police and ran over to him asking “where the driver for the car?” He replied that he was the driver and explained to everyone present what had just transpired. However, given that his car had apparently been involved in the second robbery that night, the driver said the officers there told him “we get a good mind keep you here.”
He was referred to the Turkeyen Police Station, which had jurisdiction for the area the robbery occurred and after giving a full statement he returned to base. However, the audibly upset man then recounted that he later received a call stating that he was wanted at the East La Penitence Station, as the police there wanted to conduct an interview with him. He was later kept at the station “whole day,” after which he was taken to the Brickdam lockups and held for 72 hours for “accomplice to robbery.” He said that while at the East La Penitence station, he was questioned twice; once by the officers there and the second time by the Criminal Investi-gation Department (CID). The latter, he said, gave him “a hard time…try to put words in my mouth… telling me ‘I seeing sheer lie in you face.’” The driver said he is very upset at the way he was treated by the police. “If I was involved in a robbery, why would I go to the police station with the same vehicle and number plate? I’m working at Sheriff Taxi Service for the past three years, why they didn’t go there and find out about me? They ain’t supposed to check a person out if they suspect them? I never in my life had a criminal record. I go to the station to make a complaint and they turn back and lock me up and my wife and children crying,” he said. He added that he is the main breadwinner of his family and now he has to work extra hard, as he had to pay $10,000 station bail as well as almost $100,000 in legal fees to get the matter sorted. “Plus I had to stay home for a week, cause I might have crash up or something how I de feeling,” he added.
‘Lucky escape’
Another Sheriff Taxi Service driver, 50, who also requested anonymity, was also robbed by the same gunman, and he told this newspaper that he picked up the “customer” at around 11pm, four Sundays ago at the corner of Camp and Princes streets. The man, he said, initially requested to be taken to the East Ruimveldt back road, but on their way there he declared that he had changed his mind and wanted to be taken to his home in Albouystown instead. The driver changed course and took the passenger to Punt Trench, where the man quickly “push back the seat and pull a gun and put it to my neck and tell me hand over all I had.” All he had, the driver explained, was his gold wedding band, which he had been wearing for 25 years, his LG cellular phone and $1,500 of $6,500 he had on his person.
“When I give he that, he said ‘Don’t give me tha, I know you gotta get more than tha,’ but he still took it and the ring and the phone,” the taxi driver said.
He said the robber then instructed him to pop the trunk of the vehicle and get in, and he [the perpetrator] got out and proceeded to go around the driver’s side. The driver explained that the engine was still running and so, acting fast, he pretended to be complying with the robber’s wishes and then quickly bent down and began reversing. He said as he did this, the perpetrator trained the gun at him but he [the driver] was too fast for him, and turned the next corner and fled. He said he went straight to the Brickdam Police Station, where he was referred to the Ruimveldt Outpost.
There, he said he met another driver from Sunset Taxi Service, who had apparently been robbed that very night. The two made their reports, went away and returned the next day to give their statements at the Ruimveldt Station. The second taxi driver, he said, had picked up his attacker from somewhere in Albouystown, so he [the first driver] presumes that it was the same man who had robbed him that night.
Apart from Indian Chief, Sheriff and Sunset Taxi Services, the suspect has also targeted drivers from Norman’s Taxi Service, based in Alberttown, Georgetown.
The police have contacted the Hire-Car Drivers’ Asso-ciation and individual Taxi Services in Georgetown with a view to obtaining their assistance in the apprehension of the perpetrator.
