Taxi Driver Online

Morecambe Visitor

September 20, 2006

HEADLINE: Yobs could have killed someone

AN elderly couple narrowly avoided serious injury when yobs smashed the window of a taxi in which they were travelling. It is the latest in a string of incidents which has plagued a taxi firm in Morecambe's West End.

Ernie White, 97, and his wife, Gladys, 77, were returning from a day out at the Pier Hotel in Morecambe on Monday. As the taxi, driven by Colin Gibson, reached Frontierland the driver's window suddenly smashed, showering the elderly couple in broken glass.

"We were very lucky," Mrs White explained. "If the windscreen had smashed or Colin had been hit in the face it could have been a lot worse. "He would have swerved and could have crashed into a wall. It doesn't bear thinking about." Luckily both were uninjured and the couple continued their journey in another taxi.

For Mrs White it brought flashbacks of her own father's death.

"We were both a bit shaken up because it happened so fast," Mrs White added. "The main thing is we weren't injured, but thinking about it now I realise what could have happened.

"My father was killed in a road accident and it brought back all those memories." The incident is the latest to be suffered by taxi firm Go Cabs.

Over the weekend a group of 15 to 20 children, some as young as six, targeted the firm's office on Lancashire Street. Stones were thrown at the windows and homophobic abuse was shouted at one of the staff.

"It seems to go in fits and starts," explained owner Steven Ogden. "We don't have any trouble for weeks and then they start throwing things at the windows.

"Now they've smashed the window of a moving taxi and it amazes me that no-one was hurt. "But we're not the only ones. They roam the streets with the aim of causing as much trouble as they can.

"It makes you scared about what's going to happen when you pass a group of kids at the side of the street because you don't know whether you're going to be next."

Sgt Andy Williams, neighbourhood policing sergeant for the West End, said the area did have a problem with criminal damage and the police were committed to stamping it out.

"Criminal damage is an offence that can take place more often than not in the West End than other areas," he said. "It's something we are committed to vastly reducing.

"In relation to the link between youths and crime I don't think we are any different to any other area in the county."
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