A 30-year-old man from Shahjahanpur has been sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Rs 40,000 by a Bijnor court for the murder of a taxi driver in August 2022. Shubhdeep Singh hired Ramnarayan, a taxi driver in his early 40s from Firozabad, to drive him from Haridwar railway station to Najibabad. Singh shot Ramnarayan on the highway in Nagina and stole the car, leaving the driver's body on the roadside. Nagina police investigated the crime and arrested Shubhdeep, who confessed.
In a separate case, David Lee Porter, 36, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of David Treese, 45, a taxi driver in Rochester, NY. On April 22, 2024, Porter called Treese for a ride and proceeded to pistol-whip and shoot him after entering the cab. The incident was captured on surveillance cameras inside the taxi. Christine Rodriguez, the victim's sister, spoke in court about the impact of Porter's actions on her family, stating that her brother's life was stolen by a deliberate, cruel, and unforgivable choice.
Another case involves Jonathan Kang Lee, a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier who received a life sentence for murdering a cab driver in Tukwila. Lee pleaded guilty to murder, desertion, resisting arrest, and failing to obey a lawful order at a court martial. The victim, Nicholas Hoka, was working as a cab driver in January of last year when he picked up Lee, who was fleeing JBLM. Lee stabbed Hoka to death after a fight over the taxi fare at the South Center Mall in Tukwila. Hoka's family expressed their frustration that Lee was not confined before his sentencing.
In 1994, Maurice Montrell Sanders was convicted of murder and sentenced to mandatory life in prison for shooting Yellow Company Cab driver Louis Biles III in the head during an attempted robbery. Sanders was 16 years old at the time. However, in 2019, Sanders' life sentence was shortened due to his diagnosis of stage four colon cancer and his progress in prison, where he received his GED, took college courses, and mentored other inmates. By September 2019, Sanders was expected to face just two more years in prison before becoming eligible for parole. The victim's widow agreed that Sanders had served his time, recognizing that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime.
Carlos Jordan was convicted in the fatal 1981 shooting of Stephen Warnemuende, a taxi driver in Flint, and sentenced to life in prison. Jordan, who was 17 at the time of the crime, sought parole in 2022 with the support of the Adolescent Redemption Project. The group stated that Jordan is a model prisoner who is close to obtaining a degree in business administration.
