BEING a taxi driver for more than 20 years has proven to Richard Joseph that with every passenger he picks up, he is risking his life.

The Linstead, St Catherine-based Joseph told the Jamaica Observer that he learnt this lesson the hard way a few years ago after he picked up two passengers from Spanish Town.

He said he was approaching Middleton Meadows, St Catherine, when he felt the cold, hard steel of a gun pressed to his head and one of his passengers demanding that he stop the car.

“I obeyed them, but them couldn’t even drive the car because it was a standard [vehicle]. So them tell me they need my wallet, so I just throw the wallet give them. Then them took the gun off of me and then I escaped from the car,” Joseph recalled, still a little amused at the sight of the man trying to start the vehicle and not sure how to.

“I was watching them from outside the car trying to drive it, and it wouldn’t move because them never understand it, you know. Mi never laugh at the time, but now it kind a funny. Them end up have to leave the car,” added Joseph.

However, not everyone escaped without injury, according to Joseph, as one passenger who was seated in the front seat panicked and tried to escape when he was shot by one of the robbers.

“The guy on the front seat try to escape out of the car and them shoot him. He didn’t die, and I alerted the police and said somebody down in the gully got shot. Then the police go down there with them flashlight and whatever and found him and took him out,” Joseph said.

He said his family was worried for him when they learnt of the incident.

“My family was very scared but all of my intention was to bring those people to justice, and we did. The police eventually found them nearby.”

Despite his brush with death, Joseph said he never felt like he needed to stop driving his taxi because, “nuh body a go stop me from doing what I should do, cause me nuh fraid. I’m a Christian so I don’t fear people, only God me fear.”