Cab

The city of Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are teaming up to offer the city's first guaranteed-ride-home service to encourage alternative commuting options. Called the Fare-less Cab, the program offers a safety net for Annapolis-area commuters who work at enrolled businesses and end up working late or need to get home early because of an emergency. "It's like life insurance - it's there just in case," said Paula Chase-Hyman, coordinator for the partnership, Clean Commute Annapolis.

Muhammad Suhail Raza Malik had ducked into an Annapolis gas station to grab a bite to eat before the Ramadan fast resumed at sunrise Monday, when a group of young men shouted derogatory racial comments and viciously attacked him, he said. Since then, the 27-year-old Pakistani taxicab driver has been in and out of hospitals as doctors try to mend his broken right eye socket, swollen right eyelid and possibly dislocated jaw. Three men remained behind bars yesterday, charged with a hate crime in the attack.

Liz Rossi is troubled and it shows. So is everybody else at the Overlea Cab. Co. garage out in the commercial sprawl of Pulaski Highway, about a mile or so beyond the city line. "They're all scared," she says. "Especially at night."Ms. Rossi, the dispatcher, abides in a turbulence of cigarette smoke. She is diminished by the darkness of the tiny room where she works, and bleached in the glare of the single light deployed to fend it off. She is there 12 hours a day.Voices crackle from the receiver at her side.

The cost of catching a cab at Baltimore-Washington International Airport will rise by about 16 percent under emergency legislation unanimously approved last night by the Anne Arundel County Council. The council unanimously passed the first taxi fare increase in nine years at the airport and across the county. "I'd say it's rather overdue," said Anne M. Hatcher, the county's licensing director. The initial cost of hailing a taxi will rise by 20 cents to $1.80 ($2.30 at BWI), and the per-mile charge will also rise by 20 cents, to $1.40, making Anne Arundel's taxis among the most expensive in the region.

Baltimore County police today are seeking a man suspected in an armed carjacking last week in the Woodlawn area. According to police, a man hailed a taxi early Thursday morning and asked the driver to take him to Ingleside Avenue. Several witnesses told police that as the vehicle passed through the 5900 block of Franklin Ave., the passenger, armed with a gun, dragged the driver out of his cab. The driver, who police did not identify, told investigators that the man threatened him with a stun gun, forced him out of the cab and took his cell phone.

Things have been tight for cabdrivers in Annapolis. The U.S. economy is booming, the cost of living is up and gasoline prices have taken off, while their fares have idled for nearly seven years. For Cathy Dean, a driver for Yellow Checker Cab Co., recent years are some of the worst in her 25-year career. "Everything else is going up - gas, electric, insurance on the car - but we haven't gotten a raise," said Dean, who lives in Arnold. "I'm a single parent now raising a teen-ager, and it's hard to make ends meet."

A Harford County jury convicted an 18-year-old man yesterday of murder in the shooting of an Edgewood cab driver and father of nine in 2004, a crime prosecutors said was motivated by the defendant's desire to make his mark with a local gang. Wayne Lavon Bond Jr. stood emotionless as the jury read the verdict after five hours of deliberations, only turning to watch as his sisters escorted his nieces and nephews out of the courtroom while sobbing. He could face life in prison. Prosecutors described the verdict as a victory against gang violence, as well as against witness intimidation.

Efforts are under way in Howard County to help Kwaku Atta Poku, the Columbia cab owner who lost his home to foreclosure through no fault of his own, but for now he and his family continue to struggle financially. Niel Carey, 75, a retired Ellicott City teacher who has used Atta Poku's sedan service, said he was moved to create a fund to help Atta Poku through Howard County's Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center. County officials are also investigating whether they can help Atta Poku, 55, his wife and three small children, who are searching for a new place to live while he works to rebuild his AAAA Star taxi business.

"I'm a young chicken yet," she says with a laugh.But she doesn't pick up fares anymore, something she did as a pioneering woman cabbie for more than 30 years."I was the first woman cab- driver" in Baltimore, Jaron says. And who's to dispute it? She started hacking in 1929, before most of us were born. And no records from those days seem to survive at the Police Department, the Motor Vehicle Administration or the Public Service Commission, which regulates cabs."That's when I was young," Jaron says.

A cabdriver was fatally shot last night as he transported a passenger in Baltimore's Charles Village after a road rage incident on a nearby street, city police said. No arrest had been made late last night, and the nature of the argument was not known, said Agent Donny Moses, a city police spokesman. About 9 p.m., Northern District police received a call of a shooting in the 100 block of W. 28th St. between Maryland Avenue and North Howard Street, Moses said. "When police arrived, they found the driver of a Checker cab slumped in the driver's seat bleeding from a bullet wound to the head," Moses said.