Reward Offered In Bronx Livery Cab Attacks

The suspects.

A $1,000 reward is being offered after a pair of violent attacks on livery cab drivers last month.

The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers is now offering that award, hoping to lead to two suspects that the union believes are both responsible for the recent attacks on drivers in Bronx.

“We want to make sure that we get these guys off the streets as soon as we possibly can,” the Federation’s Fernando Mateo said Sunday. “It’s very ignorant for anyone to get get into a cab today and think he’s going to rob the driver, assault him, murder him, and get away with it.”

The first incident happened on August 25 when a driver was robbed and assaulted with a hammer.

Four days later, another driver was stabbed and is now recovering after surgery.

Mateo is calling on the NYPD to do a faster job of getting surveillance photos out of the cabs and into the hands of the industry where he said they can be spread around to other drivers, hopefully preventing similar attacks.

He said if they had those photos after the first attack, they might have been able to prevent the second.

Mateo also reminded drivers not to pick up illegal street hails, which is believed to be the case in both incidents.