Taxi driver tragedy: NYC cabbie found dead in his car last week is third lost in as many months, union says

The union — the NY Taxi Workers Alliance — said that the driver, who it declined to identify out of respect for his family, pulled over after making a drop-off in Manhattan’s West Village between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11.

“He started work around 2:30 that afternoon and all the friends, they talk to each other, so they inform each other when they’re starting their shift,” said the union’s executive director, Bhairavi Desai, of how he and his other driver friends communicate throughout the day.

“After the rush hour, everyone’s trying to just contact each other, maybe have a break together, and they just couldn’t find him,” she added. “He wasn’t answering.”

The driver’s friends tracked down his cab to where he parked near the corner of 7th Avenue and Charles Street around 11 p.m. Friday night, Desai said. They were able to find him by contacting the broker for his taxi medallion, who used a GPS locator attached to the cab’s meter to trace it to the West Village corner.

“The broker found that he had done a drop between 5 and 5:30, and the car had not moved since then,” she said. “So then the friends drove there immediately and got there around 11, and that’s when they saw that he was just inside the car.”

Desai said the driver’s friends noticed upon arriving that the cab was on with the air conditioning running. She added that they then immediately called 911.

Emergency services personnel arrived and found the driver unresponsive, according to the NYPD. They tried to resuscitate him but were unable to, pronouncing him dead at the scene.

The alliance will hold a memorial for the driver on Tuesday morning at the West Village intersection where he was found.

Taxi drivers need self-care, union rep says

The driver’s cause of death is still being determined by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to the NYPD. However, Desai said, the speculation is that he had a heart attack.

The driver, who lives on Long Island, is survived by his wife and 10-year-old twin children, Desai said. He has been a cabbie for many years, having purchased his taxi medallion with two of his friends in 2023.

The death comes after the union late last month held a vigil to honor one of the other taxi drivers who recently died in their cabs over the summer.

The 73-year-old driver, Gustave Bertrand Adjeli Yao, known in Harlem as 73-year-old Richard Coulibaly, was found by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to have died from natural causes. Coulibaly died on July 2, during an extreme heat wave, which included the city’s first 100-degree day in over a decade.

The union held a separate memorial this past Friday for the other driver who died in their cab over the summer: Khalifa Siva.

Desai said Siva was diabetic and was found holding his insulin while pulled over inside his cab on the Henry Hudson Parkway near 81st Street in Upper Manhattan in late August.

When it comes to the connection between all three deaths, Desai said she believes they stem from drivers having to make fewer trips over longer hours with less time for breaks.

“They’re just spending less time, even during the shift, taking care of themselves,” she said. “Less time to go to the doctor and get your medicine and just properly take care of yourself. You’re supposed to work the job. The job’s not supposed to work you.”

A fellow cab driver named Wain Chin expressed a similar sentiment in a WhatsApp message shared with amNewYork.

“Too many of us put in long hours of work to cope with the rising cost of operation and living,” Chin said. “The same time app companies are trimming the compensation for our work. It is so much one body can take.”

Desai said the best solution is “comprehensive economic reform” for the industry that can allow drivers to earn more “without working themselves to death.” Additionally, she said they could use more resources for access to health care.