HOLLYWOOD
Taxi driver gunned down in Hollywood
Posted on Fri, Aug. 08, 2008
BY WALTER MICHOT
WALTER MICHOT/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Hollywood police detectives surround a taxi after its driver was shot dead at Madison Street in Hollywood on Friday morning.
A Hollywood cab driver was slain early Friday morning, the fourth taxi driver to be killed in South Florida in the past six months.
The Friendly Checker driver, who was found sprawled on the sidewalk outside his cab at 2037 Madison St., was shot shortly before 5 a.m., police said.
A friend who worked the same shift with him said he probably wasn't carrying more than $40 at the time. He identified him as ''Rosario,'' an affable cabbie who was a regular at a stand off U.S. 1 near the Mardi Gras Racetrack and Gaming Center in Hallandale Beach.
''It's a shocker,'' said friend and co-worker Joe Paul. ``They dispatched him to a job, and it turned ugly.''
Police were searching for two black men wearing black bandannas on their heads. One had long, shoulder-length dreadlocks and wore a white T-shirt.
Paul said Rosario's routine was to return home about 1 a.m to take a nap and then take to the street again at 3 a.m. He would leave whatever money he had at home.
''He couldn't have had more than $20, $30, $40 on him,'' Paul said.
Rosario was a native of Italy who had a son in the U.S. Coast Guard. He visited Italy often and planned a trip home next month, Paul said.
''Everybody likes him. He's one of us, no enemies at all,'' Paul said.
The murder was the fourth taxi driver killed in the past six months. Just two weeks ago, Santiago Walter Principe, 49, was found slumped in his car on Northwest Fifth Street and 33rd Avenue in Miami-Dade.
Last month, Failex Jean-Pierre was gunned down inside his cab in North Miami, just one year after he had been the victim of an attempted armed robbery.
And on March 1, a man shot driver Patrick Zuniga, 61, as he was stopped at a light at the corner of De Leon Drive and Northwest 36th Street in Miami Springs.
Diego Feliciano, president of the South Florida Taxi Cab Association, said it's common for drivers to find themselves in a trap.
''The taxi cab industry knows we are in one of the more dangerous jobs in the nation,'' Feliciano said in a recent interview. ``We service everybody, not just who we want to. We can't discriminate. You have to go where you're sent.''
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