Taxi Driver Online

Methinks the Captain is well out of the way in the Caribbean.

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IDFIMH

Did he belong to a gun club? Must have had a licence to be able to have a shotgun unless it was illegal....

It said he had a sniper rifle on the news.

Ex Military one?

Whilst he's clearly a nutter of the first order, or I should say was, surely an arguement on a taxi rank wouldn't provoke this?

Or would it?

We would all hope not. As things get even more desperate, there's bound to be more stories coming out about arguments/fights. I hope to feck this is the worst we hear of.
Condolences to the families concerned.

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My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.

do they not have roof signs on taxis in cumbria or is it same old

Not so long ago I renewed my shotgun licence.... and was advised that if I wish to renew my firearm Certificate at the same time it would be cheaper....... they certainly knew everything I had been up to since my last renewal which was five years ago.... they went through every little thing...... extremely thoroughly...... he might well have had a licence for the rifle..... quite a lot of deer shooting goes on in Scotland.....

It is a very sad thing to have happened ..... sometime words are not enough.

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Mr T. Writes



Now I'm worried, you're a fecking headcase

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All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

I gave my shotguns to the police when we had kids..........still a marksman with a rifle though

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Aye, and so was the bold boy that whacked all those innocent people.

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All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

A comment from a contributor to the Times on line article on this story wroye;

charles coss wrote:
It is interesting that he [Derrick Bird] was born just 2 days after the Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant fire and all the nuclear radiation fallout and he was living right next to it. 750 terabecquerels (20,000 Ci) of radioactive material into the surrounding environment, including Iodine-131, which is taken up in the human body by the thyroid. Consequently milk and other produce from the surrounding farming areas had to be destroyed.

And he apparently started his killings several hours before shooting the taxi driver by killing his own twin brother & the family solicitor due to a dispute over his still alive mother's will.

From the Times on line again;

Police corrected reports that Bird’s 90-year-old mother had been shot but refused to comment on claims by close family friends that there was a bitter legal dispute over her will.

The killings were said by relatives to have begun with Bird shooting his twin brother, David, and the family’s solicitor, Kevin J. Commons, whose home was cordoned off by police last night. Those murders were said to have happened several hours before the first reports of shooting in Whitehaven.

One female relative told The Times that the twins’ other brother, Brian Bird, was in a state of utter shock. She said: “He is sitting there knowing that one of his brothers has killed the other brother. God knows how that feels.”

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Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

According to the bbc this morning the row was over a will and 2 fellow cabbies shot dead I see the next one he went for was a chelsea tractor driver and then a cyclist sounds like he has the same pet hates as many of us ! The only difference being he went too far with his "retaliation"

I wonder how many cabbies up and down the country are going to get wound up by customers cracking "gun and nutter" jokes this weekend

Taken from today's Daily Mail.

It began as a petty dispute between a group of disgruntled taxi drivers.

But the squabble - over cab rank etiquette in the small, unremarkable Cumbrian town of Whitehaven - is now thought to have triggered a horrific shooting spree which yesterday left a trail of carnage and random slaughter through a succession of nearby towns and villages.

Derrick Bird, a normally mild-mannered 52-year-old grandfather, had reached the end of his tether over rival drivers who had been queue-jumping and stealing fares from under his nose as he waited his turn on the rank.

One who saw him in the pub on Saturday night told how he had vowed to 'sort out' the simmering row.

On Tuesday night, the die was cast. Bird engaged in a shouting match with several other cab drivers after which, according to one of his colleagues, he calmly shook their hands and said: 'There's going to be a rampage tomorrow.'

And he told his friend Peter Leder: 'You won't see me again.'

This bit from the same paper might also be relevant.

In 2007 Bird was left physically and mentally scarred in a vicious attack by a fare-dodging customer. He was knocked unconscious and left with two broken teeth when he challenged Daniel Carr after he and three friends jumped out without paying.

Carr, then 19, admitted causing actual bodily harm in October that year.

Magistrates were told that following the incident, Bird had not wanted to work nights and 'was still nervous and anxious'.

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IDFIMH

If that story is proved to be true Sussex then the goverment should do somthing now.The taxi trade have said somthing like this would happen and i think it could happen again if the trades concerns are not listened to

Maybe the continual rucks at ranks, during a time when business ain't that great, was the final straw.

And once he had started he intended to clear his slate.

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IDFIMH

A trivial row over rivals stealing fares is believed to have sparked a taxi driver's horrific killing spree which left 13 dead yesterday.
After a heated argument on Tuesday night, Derrick Bird is said to have stormed off saying: 'There's going to be a rampage tomorrow.'
Bird, 52, awoke next morning to commit the worst massacre in Britain since Dunblane in 1996.
After shooting dead his twin brother, a solicitor and a taxi driver, he calmly unleashed carnage across the area to the west of the Lake District over the following three hours.
With a shotgun and high-powered rifle pointing from the window of his Citroen Picasso taxi he went on a 20-mile terror drive, killing another nine at random before shooting himself.
A further 25 were injured with eight still in hospital last night, three of them in a critical condition.
The tiny Cumbrian police force was so overwhelmed that bodies were still lying in the streets seven hours after the killings.
Last night the Queen followed Prime Minister David Cameron in expressing her 'heartfelt sympathy' to the grieving.
'I was deeply shocked by the appalling news from Cumbria,' she said.
'In asking you to pass my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the families of all those who were killed or injured, and to the injured themselves, I am sure I share in the grief and horror of the whole country.'
Bird had been suffering financial problems, compounded by what he saw as rivals 'touting' unfairly for fares in Whitehaven.
More...Slaughter in the Lake District: One man, two guns and a bloodbath
Slaughter in the Lakes: 'He looked straight at me and fired... he seemed so calm'
He had just become a grandfather... So what turned Derrick Bird from local taxi driver to mass murderer?

Scenes of horror: Police were called in to stand guard over bodies at the shooting sites, like this one in Egremont
A friend, Peter Leder, said Bird had told him hours before the killings: 'See ya Peter, but I won't see you again.'
Another driver, Steven Pater, 27, saw Bird on Saturday night and said his frustration was boiling over.
'Birdy was always complaining about drivers touting for business instead of going to the rank and waiting until they got to the front of the queue. It's because there are too many taxis.
'When I last saw him in Whitehaven he was really drunk, which was unusual because he'd normally be out driving at that time.

There were at least 30 scenes where Derrick Bird is thought to have opened fire as he went on his rampage, including at this car, covered by police, in Seascale, Cumbria
Police officers gather close to the site near the village of Boot, where Bird's body was found
'I called over to him to say I'd drive him home and he replied: 'No, I'm going to sort this out.'
'I'm not surprised he's lost it over this because it's been going on for months and he's been under a lot of financial pressure as a result.'
After Tuesday night's row at the taxi rank, Bird is understood to have gone home and threatened to take his gun and shoot someone, only to be stopped by a friend.
Sources say he then went to a local hospital in a furious mood and asked for treatment from staff before being turned away.

Police are trying to piece together his exact movements that followed. It appears he began his rampage close to home, shooting his twin brother, David, who lived nearby in the village of Frizington.
Easy target: Garry Purdham, pictured with his son Flynn, was killed as he worked on a farm
He then lay in wait at his home for solicitor Kevin Commons, 60, who had made an appointment to visit him, and blasted him in the face.
He drove to Whitehaven to take deadly revenge on fellow taxi driver Darren Rewcastle outside the A2B taxi rank where he worked.

Mr Rewcastle was seen by Bird as one of the worst offenders for stealing fares.
Witness Alan Hannah described how he fled out of Whitehaven after he saw the gunman leaning out of a car window. 'I was waiting at a red light and looked around the corner. I saw a man with a shotgun at the window.

'I just went through the red light and got the hell out of Whitehaven.'

In the carnage that ensued, Cumbria Police and emergency services were so overloaded with 999 calls that they had to call in Lancashire colleagues to help.
As Bird disappeared over a moorland road, police warned locals to stay in their homes and lock their doors.
Among the victims was farmer Garry Purdham, shot dead at point blank range as he worked on his farm with his uncle in the village of Gosforth.
In Seascale, a Betterware catalogue distributor, Jane Robinson, 66, was beckoned over by the killer who blasted her in the face.
GP Barry Walker, who dealt with victims in Seascale, said the injuries were like nothing he had ever seen.

'I'm just amazed by the deliberateness of the shotgun injuries to people's faces and the callousness of shooting people in the street. These were just indiscriminate killings. There was blood flowing in the streets.'

A forensics team inspects a taxi in Coach Road, Whitehaven
Bird ended his killing spree after he drove south to the remote village of Boot. There he crashed his car and wandered off to the scenic moorland and woods where he shot himself.
Last night police said they were keeping an completely open mind over the motive but were examining 30 different crime scenes, bagging and labelling items of evidence.
Neighbours say Bird had a gun licence and had inherited a huge cache of weapons from his father after his death 12 years ago.
Last night the reverberations from the shooting were felt across the UK and questions will be asked exactly how, after tighter legislation and security, such atrocities can be prevented in the future.
Additional reporting: JAMES TOZER, CHRIS BROOKE and LIZ HULL
VICTIMS: Twelve who died in a three hour bloodbathTwelve victims lost their lives at the hands of Derrick Bird during three hours of mayhem. They were:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... other.html