Taxi Driver Online

May 14, 2007 Monday

Derby Evening Telegraph

Cabbie robbed at knifepoint

A Taxi driver was threatened with a kitchen knife and punched in the head during a robbery at the weekend.

The male driver was attacked by two men he had picked up in Derby. They escaped with an unknown amount of cash. The assault happened in Pimlico, Mackworth, at 1.30am, on Saturday. The men had been picked up in Cowley Street, outside the Victoria Inn.

A police spokesman said officers were contacted by the cabbie's firm after he activated the emergency button in his vehicle, a black Toyota Avensis. He said: "The driver was grabbed by the throat and punched in the face. They produced a kitchen knife and threatened him but did not use it.

"They searched him and took a quantity of cash. It was a very nasty attack." He was unable to say which company the driver worked for or how much cash was stolen.

The attack comes three weeks after another taxi driver suffered a knife wound to the neck after a passenger demanded his takings. The driver had picked up a male customer in Osmaston Road, Derby, at about 8pm on April 18. When he arrived at his destination in Farmhouse Road, Sinfin, the man turned on him.

Following that attack, Mohammed Saffaf, chairman of Derby Hackney Carriage Union, said the number of attacks on taxi drivers in the city was a cause for concern. He said: "As taxi drivers, we need support from the police to help prevent things like this from happening again."

Earlier this month, jobless David Hawkins, of Rawlinson Avenue, Sunny Hill, was jailed for two-and-a-half years after trying to rob a taxi driver while drunk, causing the cab to crash.

At the time, Judge Andrew Hamilton told him: "Taxi drivers need protection from the courts. The only way I can do that is to give you a substantial term."
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