Suspect sought after cab driver stabbed in face

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This article was published 15/06/2023 (862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg taxi driver was stabbed in the face Wednesday evening, in an attack his company’s manager describes as “vicious” and “unprovoked.”

Stacey Ropos, 35, was driving to get groceries at about 7:50 p.m., when she saw a stopped Duffy’s Taxi vehicle, its rooftop alert strobe light flashing, near the intersection of Henderson Highway and Sydney Avenue.

Knowing the car beacon signals an emergency, Ropos pulled two U-turns and parked her truck behind the taxi.

“I got out of my vehicle and instantly went to approach the taxi driver and he got up out of the vehicle,” Ropos said Thursday.

“I said, ‘Are you OK, sir?’ and he said ‘No, call 911,’ and he was holding his face. He pulled away and it just started gushing blood, he had been stabbed in the cheekbone line, almost, on the left side.”

Ropos dialed for first responder assistance, while another driver who had also stopped at the scene rushed for gauze from a first-aid kit in his truck.

“(The second driver) had witnessed the ending of the altercation. He saw the young teenager, adolescent, running away,” Ropos said. “He had seen the knife that he was holding — it was about a foot-long knife, he said.”

Winnipeg Police Service spokeswoman Const. Dani McKinnon said officers responded to the scene at about 7:45 p.m.

Ropos said officers quickly flooded the area — about 10 cruisers arrived. Some gave first aid before paramedics took over; others spread out to search for the suspect.

Video of the emergency response has since circulated on social media.

McKinnon said the cab driver was taken to hospital, where he’s been upgraded to stable condition.

“No arrests have been made,” said McKinnon, who added major crimes investigators are handling the case.

Duffy’s Taxi general manager Ram Valluru said the driver is being treated at the Health Sciences Centre, adding the company is thankful for the care he’s received.

“Our thoughts are with the driver. We all hope that he has a speedy recovery,” Valluru said in an email, adding the attack was “vicious” and “unprovoked.”

“Duffy’s Taxi is very concerned that once again one of our drivers has been seriously assaulted while providing the essential service that our taxi industry is proud to provide,” Valluru wrote.

Ropos — whose husband Jesse Ropos, 36, was killed at a resort in Mexico in January — said the year has been a difficult one. Prosecutors in Puerto Aventuras have recently moved forward with homicide charges against two resort employees.

“Knowing that this stuff is literally happening right down the street from where our three children are living — that’s definitely disconcerting. (I’m) a little uneasy,” Ropos said of the attack on the taxi driver.

It is the second violent incident involving a Winnipeg cabbie to draw attention — and circulate online — in recent days.

A Unicity cab was taking customers through a Tim Hortons drive-thru on Maryland Street on Sunday morning, when an 18-year-old woman blocked the car and refused to move.

In video that circulated online, the woman jumped on the cab’s hood and kicked through the windshield, climbing through the broken glass and injuring herself.

The vehicle was running when the woman entered it, and the taxi driver, worried she would begin driving away, reached back in to shut it off. He cut two fingers on broken glass.

The woman has been charged with mischief over $5,000.

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com