A 41-year-old woman taxi driver, who braved the dangerous East Coast Demerara night to join her husband in providing for their family, was shot dead Friday evening.

KILLED: Woman taxi driver Seerajiee Singh

She was killed allegedly by teenage boys, one a neighbour, from her East Coast Demerara village of Success.

Dead is Seerajiee Singh of Lot 129 7th Street, Success. Police are hunting the young men, one an 18-year-old from the same village.

DISTRAUGHT: Pawan Singh, husband of slain woman taxi driver Seerajiee, applies Limachol refresher to his grieving daughter Mellissa. Sitting beside them are the couple’s other children, Kevin (left) and Indira. (Winston Oudkerk photo)

She leaves to mourn her husband, Pawan and their three children Indira, 24, Melissa, 14, and Kevin, 13.

Police said she was hired to do a pickup with her vehicle PJJ 3529, an AT 192 Carina, at Success, at about 22:30 h Friday. Bandits hijacked another AT 192 Carina car in Georgetown about 20 minutes after, Police said.

WHY? The mother and brother of woman taxi driver Seerajiee Singh at the family's home yesterday as relatives gathered to grieve her brutal death. (Winston Oudkerk photo)

Singh's husband, also a taxi driver, said the phone call for the hire came from a Chinese restaurant in the village, and since those who requested the car were known to her, his wife decided to take the job.

Her eldest daughter, Indira, said her mother had transported the men before, and would only take jobs at nights with those who she was familiar with.

Police said the two men joined the car and requested to go to Ogle.

When on the Ogle Airstrip Road, they stuck her up and ordered her out of the car but she refused to get out. She was then shot in her mouth and pushed out of the vehicle which the men drove away with, Police said.

Police, who were investigating an incident nearby, responded to reports of the shooting and transported the woman to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), where she died shortly before midnight.

Her husband, Pawan, said when he received the call that his wife was in the hospital, he rushed there.

He said when he got there, her body was "full of blood" and a cloth was stuffed in her mouth by hospital staff because of bleeding from the gunshot wound in her mouth.

He said his wife released the cloth from her mouth to tell him something, but hospital staff prevented her from doing so given her condition. She soon thereafter succumbed.

Earlier in the night, Pawan said he was having a few drinks at a village shop after a "funeral hire" all day, when his wife passed and tooted her horn at him. Instinctively, he said, he remembered her saying how fearless she was to work at nights with violent crimes on the East Coast almost common place.

"All they could do is kill me," he recounted her always saying.

Pawan said he was a long time taxi driver, and when things on the road became rough, he decided to open his own taxi service. However, he said after constant problems with taxi drivers, his wife decided that she would drive.

He said she went to driving school and he bought the new car for her, and for the past four years they had been managing the business together.

Pawan said she always wore a 'Kangol' cap in the reverse, "to look like a man." He said too, she always wore pants when driving. He said they would close off working each day at midnight, because they were meeting a bank loan.

However, he emphasised that she was careful to pick up only people she was familiar with, and he never expected that his "own village people would do this."

One of the men implicated in the killing lives not far from the Singhs and his entire family, including his mother, brother and sister were held for questioning by Police yesterday.

The other young man Police are looking for as identified by the slain woman's relatives, reportedly has a good reputation in the village.

In the other carjacking Friday night, Police said taxi driver Forbeswyn Daniels was robbed by three gunmen at Tucville, Georgetown.

Daniels was driving motor car HB 2736, an AT 192 Carina, along Croal Street when the men stopped him and asked to be taken to South Ruimveldt, also in Georgetown, Police said.

When in the vicinity of Turning Point, they further requested to be taken to Tucville where they held up, robbed and assaulted Daniels with a gun, then locked him in the car trunk. Police said he freed himself shortly after but the men escaped in the car with $8,000 in cash and a cellular phone.

The car was later found at Republic Park, Greater Georgetown, with the stereo system missing, Police reported.

Car-jackers have recently been targeting AT 192 Carina cars and several taxi drivers have been held up and robbed of their vehicles.

Sunday, February 12, 2006