Aug 21, 2008 7:58 pm US/Eastern
Cab Driver Becomes Another Assault Victim
Five Cab Drivers Have Been Killed In South Florida In The Past Seven Months
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Juan Martin has always worked a dangerous profession; the federal government says that taxicab drivers are 60 times more likely to be murdered on the job than other workers.
But the Miami taxicab driver was fortunate not to have been added to that statistic on August 12th, when he picked up a fare in Oakland Park. He explained to
CBS4 Reporter Peter D'Oench that at about 3 a.m., three men asked to be taken to a Subway shop. Instead of paying Martin, the men pulled him from his car and beat him up so severely that he was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
He suffered a concussion and a broken right ankle, and he has since suffered a relapse from his injuries and is still being hospitalized.
Martin says the three men seen in surveillance video first insulted him and then beat him.
He told
CBS4 News what the men told him as the attack took place.
"You're stupid," said Martin. "You don't know what you're doing. Who do you think we are? Tourists?"
"I went to defend myself. Then they hit me in the mouth," said Martin. "They were a little drunk, they were crazy guys. They hit me in the head."
Then it turned savage.
"They kicked me in the head, both of them. They kicked me in the head….15 to 20 times."
He had picked them up at the Solid Gold Club at Oakland Park Boulevard and US1, and then drove them to the nearby Subway shop.
"When they came down on my foot, it broke."
CBS4's Peter D'Oench asked Martin, "What would it mean to you to see the men captured?"
"Justice. I would like for somebody to do to them what they did to me."
Recent cab drivers who have been killed locally are:
• On August 7, the man fellow cabbies knew as ''Rosario'' was found sprawled on the sidewalk of a Hollywood street before dawn.
• On March 1, driver Patrick Zuniga, 61, was shot at a Miami Springs intersection. His cab crashed into a bus bench. Zuniga, the father of a 2-year-old son, died at Jackson Memorial Hospital. A Naples man was charged.
• On June 21, Failex Jean-Pierre, 36, was gunned down inside his cab in North Miami, one year after he had been the victim of an attempted armed robbery.
• On July 3, Josue Reyes, a driver for Super Yellow Cab of Miami, was shot in the parking lot of Miami Beach's Bass Museum. A driver for another company, William Garrido, was arrested.
• On July 30, Santiago Walter Principe, 49, was found dead behind the wheel of his cab after he crashed into a stop sign and a street sign.
If you have any information, please contact Broward County
Crimestoppers at 954-493-TIPS.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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