Tacoma cab driver found dead in street

Published 11:06 pm Sunday, March 8, 2009

TACOMA — A taxi cab driver was found dead in the street next to his vehicle with its engine running and lights on Sunday morning in southwest Tacoma.

Police said they were investigating the man’s death as a homicide. He worked for King Cab Co. of Fife.

The blue-and-orange taxi was in the middle of the street in the 3600 block of S. Lawrence Street when an officer saw it at 5:22 a.m.

Cash was scattered over the back seat of the cab, but police had found no witnesses.

“There wasn’t anybody around,” Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum told The News Tribune.

The victim’s name and the suspected cause of death were not immediately released. Family members identified him to KING-TV as a 23-year-old immigrant from Somalia.

If confirmed as a homicide, it would be the first of the year in Tacoma.

King Cab officials told KING-TV that the driver picked up a passenger at 3:26 a.m. outside a Tacoma restaurant.

Then the car’s GPS unit signaled that at about 4 a.m. the taxi stopped a couple miles away in the middle of the street, where the driver was found dead.

King Cab owners say the taxi was equipped with an emergency call button.

“The emergency button was working but he did not use, so maybe it happened so fast,” Abdi Ahmed told KING-TV.