Thursday, June 4, 2009

taxi driver murdered, very close to my house!

(photo from elheraldo.hn)


I was greeted by this scene yesterday as I was heading home after work. There was an obscene amount of traffic on the Blvd. Suyapa, and as I got closer to the road that goes into my neighborhood I saw why. There were about 20 police cars/trucks on the other side of the street (the same side as UNAH, for all you Tegucigalpans). The whole area was taped off with police tape, and there was a parked trailer that said "Crime Scene Investigators" on the side.

"Woah what is this about? What do you think happened?" I asked the driver.

"For there to be investigators and police tape and stuff, either someone was murdered or kidnapped," he replied.

And he was right. A taxi driver was murdered at 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon by a gang member for refusing to pay the illegal "taxes" that the drivers are "required" to pay to the gangs. He was the 3rd driver to be murdered in the previous 24 hours.

Very scary!

(To read the article from El Heraldo in Spanish, click here. To read the very rough translation in English via Google translator, click here.)

2 comments:

La Gringa said...

The closer it gets, the scarier it gets. A neighbor was murdered during a robbery a few days ago. Violence is completely out of control!

Garay One said...

Indeed. I got into a cab from UNAH the other day. The cabbie told me that they were planning to kill 25 gangmember for every cabbie the murdered.

Shame.