Taxi Driver Scared To Return To Work After Almost Being Struck By Bullet While Driving On Queens Highway
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police are looking for the gunman who opened fire on a major city highway in Queens, piercing a taxi cab and just narrowly missing the driver and passenger inside.
Swapon Roy was driving a 30-year-old woman from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Manhattan on Monday when a bullet shattered the cab's rear window.
There's now a bullet hole in the headrest of his taxi's backseat.
"She was sitting here and the bullet, you see the headrest, there's the bullet," Roy told CBS2's Ali Bauman.
It happened on the Van Wyck Expressway by Jamaica Avenue just before 2 a.m.
Window shards cut the woman's face, but the bullet narrowly missed the both of them.
"We are lucky," Roy said.
"So if that headrest wasn't there, it would've gone straight through?" Bauman asked.
"Yeah. Yeah," Roy said. "If I drove little bit slowly, just a couple of moments, it would've hit her or me."
Roy has been a cab driver for seven years but had to stop working during the pandemic. He only returned to the road in June and feels the job is much more dangerous now than it was before the pandemic.
"After one month, this is happening," Roy said.
"Does this make you scared to go back to work?" Bauman said.
"Yeah, I'm very scared," Roy said.
Shootings are up 18.8% citywide so far this year compared to last, but they have been trending down recently with 33.9% fewer shootings in June compared to the same period in 2020.
"This happened to me, so I think this could happen to any driver working in the night time," Roy said. "I want to say to the mayor, 'Please, help us.'"
Investigators have not made any arrests and ask anyone with information on this shooting to call police.
