Woman taxi-driver stabbed

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 14

Woman taxi-driver stabbed

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, December 28.

A dramatic plea for help broke into the radio* telephone band of an Auckland taxi company tonight after a woman taxi-driver, who had stopped to pick up a fare, was stabbed a number of times.

The woman, aged 37, was driving the taxi along Karangahape Road just before 7 p.m. when she was flagged down outside the Rising Sun Hotel.

As she waited in the car, a man climbed into the passenger’s seat, pulled out a sheath knife and stabbed her a number of times about the head and arms.

The assailant then apparently fled from the car, and the woman picked up the hand-phone of the radiotelephone unit and called her base for help. \ The police believe that seconds after she made the call the woman fainted, for she did not reply to urgent calls asking where she was. Search by taxis All taxis employed by the company, the Auckland Cooperative Taxi Society, Ltd, then began a search for the woman. She was found by a police patrol only a few minutes after the attack. She was rushed to Auckland Hospital as detectives and uniformed police were called in.

Detective-Inspector P. M. Gentry said tonight that a man was arrested by police soon after the attack was reported. Police take knife Detectives took possession of a sheath knife, with a sixinch blade. It was found wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. Inspector Gentry said the woman’s injuries were not thought to be serious. It is understood she was in a fairly satisfactory condition in the hospital tonight. A man will appear in the Magistrate’s Court in Auckland tomorrow charged with assault with intent to injure.