Cabbie Sidikiba Diallo claims fare Glenn Yonemitsu was too drunk to give destination, vomited, cursed and spit
A taxi driver was stripped of his license Tuesday for tossing a passenger into a busy midtown street in a brawl caught on videotape.
Crazed cabbie Sidikiba Diallo can be seen ripping his passenger Glenn Yonemitsu out of the taxi and hurling him onto E. 32nd St. in the tape of the April 16 incident.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission announced the license revocation Tuesday.
“That’s good to hear,” Yonemitsu, 28, told the Daily News.
The city had hauled Diallo before an administrative judge over the summer. At the hearing, the cabbie said Yonemitsu was drunk and had vomited and cursed, but the passenger, a computer programmer, claimed
Diallo made lame excuses about why he couldn’t drive him to his home in Sunnyside.
The judge recommended the hack lose his license for assaulting his passenger, though he was within his right to refuse to take the inebriated man to Queens.
Diallo, a driver for 20 years, said he had not received notification of the punishment and was still driving a cab.
“I want to defend my name,” he said. “This guy came along — he was drunk. … I just pushed him out of the cab.”
The administrative judge ruled the cabbie should have simply called 911 rather than take matters into his own hands.
She also found little evidence to back up the cabbie’s claims, while noting the video clearly captured his own “abusive conduct.”
The tape shows Yonemitsu standing with friends outside Ichi Umi before getting into the cab just before 3 a.m.
Over the next seven minutes, Diallo is seen getting in and out of the taxi, opening the passenger door and apparently arguing with his passenger.
He then climbs inside the cab, where a struggle in the back seat ensues. Yonemitsu is then pushed from the cab, with Diallo tumbling out after him.
The pair grapple in the road, but Yonemitsu jumps back in the cab — and Diallo pulls him back out and sends him sprawling across the street like a rag doll.
“It hurt a lot,” Yonemitsu recalled. “I ended up with a lot of injuries that did last a long time.”
The video then shows Diallo dashing into the driver’s seat and Yonemitsu hopping into the back again. With the rear doors still wide open, the cab barrels down the street and around the corner — where Yonemitsu says he jumped out and called police.
Diallo was not charged with a crime, evidence, he said that he didn’t assault anyone.
“If I beat him, if that was case, I was going to be arrested,” he told the News. “He was very drunk.”
The judge wrote that TLC rules allow drivers to refuse service to drunk or disorderly passengers, but there was no excuse for the “angry, out-of-control assault.”
“[His] misconduct is of the severest kind,” Judge Tynia Richard wrote of Diallo in her August report.
TLC Commissioner David Yassky approved the judge’s recommendation.
“The kind of behavior exhibited by this individual is inexcusable, and will not be tolerated,” he said.
“Violence is never an option for people who hold a TLC license, and he has forfeited the privilege of having one.”
By Reuven Blau , Tracy Connor AND Kerry Wills
this is bad, I should have waited and called 911 instead pushing the passenger. Anyway depends on individual reaction.
Seeing this video give us some proof how this angry cabdriver acted violently. It is shocking! Would you guys like to have a video camera in cabs?
I still like to believe there r more good apples in a yellow batch than rotten ones with worms closed up in news.
ZagAt survey declared yellow cab is the best place to throw up . Never mind the spotless interior, it’s your citizen’s right to vomit on Windows’s , seats, floors and if driver says no , take his license away.
the amount of stress and disconfort this kind of passengers put on driver mind is just unbelievable.the cab is not a garbage can ,and the cab is a place where the driver sit for up 12 hours.can you tell
chair person or blooberg if i can vomit inside your office .our cab is our office.the smelling and dizzziness within the cab can disconfort and stress the driver for many months.the lease and time cost money ,the garages dont give refund if the driver lost working hours or dissressed hate to continue working.anytime you call police ,just they waist your time ,they come and look at your eyes for hours and dont give you a chance to talk or be able to defend your self.they always treat us like roaches ,move or die.i lost money to bronx ,i lost money to brooklyn ,i lost money to queens ,i lost money to jersey,no body respect the driver ,anytime the police comes the passenger lie ,the police never trusted the cabie.we are criminals under the tlc rules.i never recoverd my money from garages or passenger,i been working for 10 years and still struggling living like a homless,i dont have any benefit driving somebody to his home without collecting my money.i wil take any problem by my hand ,and i dont care for the outcome .we loosing in this job and we already lost ,tlc must protect driver income ,police need to be ontime and help the driver recover his money,if somebody throw out in my cab that would cost me the whole month of income,
the smell stays inside a cab up to one year.and you always remenber that incident.soon i will vomit at tlc office in queens and see what they are thinking,i had passenger who urinited in the back seat , passenger who slept for hours and you call police but no money recoverd.what is going on with tlc.
For any problem, major or minor, that the taxi drivers are facing i blame the taxi drivers. Because we do not have a strong union. We, the taxi drivers, should go hand in hand helping and backing each other. These vampires that run the TLC know that we do not have unity and as a result taxi drivers end up suffering.
Most cabbies I have taken are nice, but Sunday morning I met one that cost me the content of my suitcase and suitcase. I had to direct him from JFK to Brooklyn. At the destination he was on the opposite side of the street and I asked him to turn into the driveway it was ok it was driveway to the garage so that i could get my luggage at the side entrance, he refused. He held on to my change, I had to ask for my money. He then placed my suitcases directly in the driveway of the building and before I could cross the street someone with SUV turned into the driveway and ran over my suitcases. He tried to blame the man telling me the man is a thief wanting to steal the suitcases. He then drove off.
Can anyone do something about how some cabbies are using or abusing restroom at Jfk waiting are….. they should place a better types of toilet so some who wants to wash after can do so. Also theirs so many people always playing in the cafetaria, so loud and yelling and screaming and sost cabbies cant even have a coffee in peace. Does anyone care?
“Throw up” car service available . All metal cage with steel benches, cleaned with “clorox” after each use . Group of five vomiters receives a free ice cold shower !
All cabs should be equiped with stickers of how to drink and don’t get drunk . W.J. Fields picture should act as a a posture child of all drinkers over the ages . Exellent book of V. Erofeev “Moscow- Rooster town” ,which has been translated into many languages, goes deep on the subject . The best way to get drunk and stop bothering others is buy enough expensive booze, tell everyone that you went on vacation, go home, lock yourself in and drink for a week . Running around drunk and abusive is for suckers !
If anyone of you guys drove cab for 10 or more years my advice to you, don’t work after 10 p.m. You don’t have nerves for all the freaks out there. Best work doubles 2 a.m. to 10 p.m. take a next day off.
JFK once the luggage is out, driver is no longer responsible for it. Try to get Traveler”s insurance.
Lion, so called terrorists, are regular people who are affraid the power the United States poses. The Soviet Unon played an important part ,providing counterbalance to the United States. Drivers will never be able to have a Union exactly for the same reason, the giant country USSR stood for workers around the world . The trush which runs taxi bussines now days has simply been afraid of massive rettaliotion for the abuse they do now days . America needs strong communist Russia like air. Holding a whole world at bay will ruin this country. Nobody can afford such a massive army . Workers need protection , workers need Soviet Union .
When do people turn to religion? When they are afraid of the circumstances they can not control, poverty, powerful enemies , femine, deseases, droughts and many other similar reasons. As America becomes more and more aggressive ,more wars it starts more people will believe that only higher authority can help them,it will bring new conflicts ,religious wars are devastating, and lasts forever add to it nuclear weapons and we’ll find out that catastrophy is our near future. It should be the foremost decision of the intenational body to create a group of countries which are the complete opposite to the U.S.,which do follow U.N.rules and not rogue states sponsoring terrorism, the same way courts are are made of lawers and prosecutors. An expansion politics America practices now days would bring no results,people need real jobs and slave type like driving taxis, it can only be acheived when countries are protected from vaulchers who prey on weak and desperate .
I think nobel prize should be given to a group of scientists who can come up with unti greed medicine.
It happened to me twice. At those times, I didn’t make any arguments with passengers, on the other hand i was searching for police on the road. Then pulled over and explained in details to the police officers, then kicked their ass by laws.
2 big issues with taxis: refusal to go to outer boroughs and claiming that the credit card machine is not working.
I was wondering how legal and effective these techniques would be:
1) telling a the cab driver that you are going to union square, then changing destination in the middle and saying you want Brooklyn or Queens.
2) when you get there, driver says that credit card machine isn’t working, what can on do? Refuse to pay? Can I say that I only have credit card?
I absolutely think cabs should have cameras and this man should have had his license stripped. I had a driver who was ignorant and rude because he didn’t know where my hotel was so he yelled at me the whole way there. I had the address; it is not MY job to give the cab driver directions. It’s called a GPS! or mapquest, or google maps! By the time I finally got to my hotel I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to get away from him so of course I forgot to get a receipt for my $51 ride so my employer could reimburse me. After 3 voice-mails and 2 e-mails I finally got a response: “No receipts after you leave the car.” And I only got the reply because I said my messages would not stop until I was contacted. I understand some people make cab driver’s lives hell, but that’s part of the job! If you can’t handle it get a different job or just simply don’t take it out on customers who had nothing to do with it! This is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with. I would only recommend this service to my enemies.