Police: Livery Cab Driver Robbed, Forced Into Trunk

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A livery cab driver was taken for a wild ride Thursday.

The cabbie agreed to pick up a man who walked up to Dat Car Service's dispatch window in the Bronx around 11 a.m., police said. Once inside the car, the customer pulled out a handgun, demanded the driver's money and cellphone and ordered him to head up the Saw Mill River Parkway to Tarrytown before forcing the driver into the trunk of the car.

The cabbie escaped by finding an emergency-release lever and jumping from the car, police said. He broke his ankle.

Police in Tarrytown later spotted the vehicle and arrested Robert T. Mizell, of the Bronx. He is charged with second-degree kidnapping, first-degree criminal use of a firearm and second-degree possession of a weapon.

Mizell has been out on parole since July after serving prison time for second-degree robbery, The Journal News reported. He also was involved in a 2004 robbery of a Brooklyn shoe store, in which a responding police officer fired a shot at Mizell, but missed, hitting the leg of a 12-year-old boy in a wheelchair instead, the paper reported.

A fellow driver told CBS 2 that attacks on cabbies are becoming far too common.

"Things are not nice out there no more," said Rene Soto. "I've got a few friends of mine already that in the past month, one of them got hit over the head just to rob him because they know that he's a cab driver."

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