A 30-year-old Kitty Cabs taxi driver was yesterday reliving a most harrowing experience of having to flee from his car under blows and threat of being shot, after three men who had hired him to do a run took him to an eerie spot, and beat him before hijacking the car, which they eventually stripped and abandoned on a lonely roadway in Lamaha Park, in Georgetown.

The taxi driver recalled that at about 23:30 hrs on Friday night, he was hired by three men to go on a run to La Parfaite Harmonie on the West Bank of Demerara. Having agreed to pay his price of $2,500, they boarded the car. But as he was driving off, they said they would like to go to Lamaha Springs first, and the driver complied with their request.

However, when they had already proceeded past the Police outpost in Lamaha Springs, the men directed him to a dark and lonely dead-end. At that stage, the driver stopped the car and told them candidly that he was not going in that lonely trail, especially since the road was bad.

They then asked him to take them to Sophia, and he drove them to where ‘B’ Field intersects with ‘C’ Field. They told him to keep going, but he refused, and the men became annoyed.

One of them got out of the car, and the driver told the men to pay him $1,200 for the distance he had covered. The man pretended that he was going into his pocket, but suddenly began to ‘pelt cuffs’ at the driver, who said he began to fight back.

The two other men who were in the back seat of the car joined their partner in attacking the driver; they viced him and began beating him. But when they realised that he was a force to be reckoned with, one man shouted to the other “Shoot he! Shoot he!” at which point the driver became terrified. He overpowered the man in the front seat, jumped out of the vehicle, and ‘ran for life’.

By then both the driver and the car were blood spattered from minor abrasions he had sustained. He said that, after running some distance, he spotted a hire car, flagged it down and asked to be taken to Turkeyen Police Station.

When he made the report, the Police reportedly told him that the patrol car was just on the road, but did not come across either the men or the car. The driver then asked the police to make another drive around to see if they would find the men, but the police responded that he should return to the station at 09:00 hrs the following day (yesterday) and make a formal report.

Despondent, the driver took another taxi and headed down to the Kitty Cabs car base, where he informed his boss about his dreadful ordeal.

Meantime, the men who had stolen the car drove it to Lamaha Park, where they stripped it of its battery, all four controllers for the windows, and the keys for the car. They also took away two Curve cellular phones; cash to the tune of $28,000; documents the driver had in the car, including his driver’s licence and passport; a new pair of boots, and other personal effects.

As instructed by the Turkeyen Police, he returned to the station at 09:00 hrs yesterday morning, and whilst giving a statement, a phone call came through to the officer stating that the car had been found abandoned on a lonely track in Lamaha Park.

The police took him to the spot, where they found the car stripped. The distraught complainant, who gave descriptions of the men, recalled that they were young and perhaps had not even reached 28 as yet.

The driver is a Muslim and was doing a period of fasting for the month of Ramadan. He said he had his Quran with him, and the men threw it onto the floor of the car, but he vowed they will pay for their deeds.

Meanwhile, the newly resuscitated Lamaha Park Community Policing Group (CPG), on making the discovery that a car had been abandoned in the area, immediately informed the East La Penitence Police, who promptly responded to the call. The CPG has expressed concern over the frequency with which bandits have been stealing and abandoning cars at that spot, noting that it has now been the third such incident in the last two months.

Police arrived on the scene and proceeded to do dusting for fingerprints and other evidence.

NIGHT OF HORROR
Meanwhile, owner of Kitty Cabs, Ms. Zora Khan, with whom the driver works, travelled to the scene where her car was discovered yesterday morning. She recalled that it was a night of horror for her. She said that, shortly before receiving the news of the young driver’s encounter and the carjacking of her vehicle, she had to rush to the Georgetown Hospital after another driver had been attacked and shot in the neck by a man ‘seemingly on a high’.

Ms Khan said she learnt that the man, who lives in a ‘Wai Wai’ house next to the taxi service on Alexander Street, had asked her driver for money and the driver had replied that he had none. On hearing that, the man chased him into the dispatch room and shot him in the right side of his neck. The bullet travelled to the left side and lodged in the driver’s shoulder.

He has been admitted to the GPHC, and is awaiting surgery to have the bullet removed.

By Shirley Thomas