How a cabbie ran into trouble to stop a woman from taking her own life Loop Cayman Islands

Black Immigrant Daily News

It was a normal end of the workday in August for Dane Turner, a taxi driver who operates in the Corporate Area of St Andrew in Jamaica, while taking passengers to Half-Way Tree from Chancery Street (Price Rite).

By the time he got to Constant Spring Road, he realised that he had only one passenger left in his car. It was a woman.

As it was just after 8pm, the taxi driver was thinking that he would be able to get off early that night. However, it ended up being a long night that saw him being ticketed by the police in order to save that passenger’s life.

Turner told Loop News that the drive into Half-Way Tree was quiet until he noticed blood on the passenger’s hands. She was holding a razor blade.

“I started questioning her, asking her what was she doing and all she said was that everything is over and she was going to end it,” Turner recounted.

The father of toddlers said that he was worried about the stranger, who had threatened to injure herself fatally.

“She had razor blades, so I didn’t want to try to take them from her.

“I decided that I couldn’t let her leave the car and hurt herself, so I started driving her around. She said she wanted to go downtown, but I think that once she get to her destination she would hurt herself,” he said.

The taxi operator said that he told his passenger that he would take her to a police station but she said she would open her wrist before he could get help.

According to the taxi operator, at first, the passenger refused to say what was troubling her.

Turner said he offered her something to eat or drink as he wanted to get her help without things escalating. When she refused the offer, he decided to get the police to help, but he had to do it in such a way that she wouldn’t realise what was happening.

“By that time I was just driving all over Kingston. I wanted to get the police to stop me, so I started doing some things, but the police wouldn’t pull me over.

“I broke stoplights, drive through stop signs and no police stopped me. When that didn’t work, I disconnected one of my front light and drove on Mandela Highway,” he recounted.

It was then that he was stopped by a team of police officers carrying out traffic operations on the highway.

He said that when he explained to the police what was happening, they didn’t believe him. Turner said he was ticketed and told that he was just trying to get out of receiving the ticket.

Turner said he insisted that they help him with the woman. According to the taxi operator, he managed to convince two of the senior police officers on the team and they came up with a plan to get the passenger out of the car and get her help.

After getting a policewoman to assist, Turner recounted that they accosted him and took him over to his vehicle.

The police then reportedly began roughing up the taxi driver while asking him about illegal weapons. Once they were satisfied that the woman in the car was convinced that they were looking for guns, the policewoman asked her to step out of the vehicle so it could be searched.

When she stepped out of the vehicle, they noticed the blades and the blood and, after some time, they convinced her to drop the blades.

“She was screaming and crying saying that she lost her job and she doesn’t have a place to live. Life was hard for her and she just didn’t see her way out,” Turner recalled.

“My conscience couldn’t allow me to walk away. I know I couldn’t bear it if I was to put her out of my vehicle and then I see her on the news dead,” he told Loop News.

The taxi operator said in the confusion, the police did not cancel the ticket and he had to pay the fine in Traffic Court.

However, Turner said he didn’t mind because he recently saw the passenger again when she boarded his taxi.

According to the taxi driver, she thanked him for what he had done that night in August and told him that she is now employed and is trying to improve her life.

NewsAmericasNow.com