Roland Goyer
Montréal, QC / Aug. 14, 1992
Roland Goyer, 55, had just delivered a 27-year-old woman to her destination when she informed him that she did not have the money to pay the fare. According to her statement, when she asked him to wait while she borrowed the money from a girlfriend, Goyer demanded some collateral. The woman offered to leave her identification and climbed into the front seat to give it to him.
Inside her purse was a hunting knife. When Goyer saw it he allegedly panicked and threw himself on top of the killer, who stabbed him to death during the struggle. The killer called the police to the scene herself. Her shoes were found inside the cab.
The killer, a drug addict, was the mother of an 18-month-old child and lived on welfare. A reporter described her as a small blonde woman of fragile beauty.
The few news reports available do not go into detail about how the knife got into the killer's hand. One would think that a driver alarmed at seeing a knife in a purse would instinctively seize it rather than attacking the person, and that a person who was not actually holding onto the knife would be easily disarmed. When asked why she was carrying a hunting knife, her lawyer suggested that "perhaps" she had been attacked in the past.
Whatever the case, the Crown agreed to a plea of manslaughter and recommended a five-year prison term. The judge sentenced the killer to 44 months, taking into account the two months she had spent in preventive detention.
More than two hundred taxi drivers attended Goyer's funeral. Representatives from Montréal's various taxi leagues met the next day to discuss shields and other safety measures.
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