David Wayne Krick
Kingston, ON / July 17, 2007
Like many other taxi companies, Kingston's Amey's taxi has divided its service area into several geographic zones. Trips originating inside a zone are dispatched to taxis that are actually located in that zone. The object of the zone system is to encourage drivers to spread out over the service area to provide a reasonably uniform level of service to customers anywhere in town.
At 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 17, 2007 -- Father's Day -- David Krick was the second car in 7 zone, waiting for a call from dispatcher Ken Osborn. Krick, 50, loved taxi driving and had done it since he was 19 years old. A couple of months earlier he had taken a job with an auto parts firm but he continued to drive on weekends.
Unmarried, he lived with his mother Shirley. His brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece made up the rest of his close family. Krick was tall and thin -- he was over six feet but weighed only 140 pounds -- and in Shirley's words "wasn't a fighter".
The man in the number one car in 7 zone that morning was a cab owner filling in for one of his drivers.
"Having driven Taxi in the same city I knew Dave fairly well," he later wrote to the taxidriver.ca web site. "He was a very reliable worker who you always knew would show up. He loved to play golf and enjoyed playing darts once the golf season ended."
The number one driver soon saw an opportunity to move out of 7 zone. "I saw that 5 zone was open and I moved to #1 on 5 zone which is a busier zone. That moved Dave up to #1 on 7 zone. I received a call right away and it went to Verona for $50. As I was driving I was thinking how lucky I was that I moved and got a $50 call. About 10 min into the trip I saw the emergency call on our gps system. It was not until after I got back to town that I heard Dave had been killed. I quickly realized that if I had not moved to 5 zone it would have been me that would have taken the fare."
At 6:33 a.m., about the same time as the 5 zone driver got his trip, Krick responded to a 7 zone call to pick up a single male passenger on Wright Crescent, near the Kingston YMCA.
Something apparently went wrong right from the beginning. It should have taken him only a couple of minutes to get to the pickup point but it was 6:44 a.m. -- 11 minutes later -- before Krick turned on his meter. "They could tell by looking at the trip on the gps that it had taken a very long time to go only a few blocks," wrote the 5 zone driver. "I feel that an argument or discussion must have been going on for a while."
At 6:45 Krick hit the dashboard alarm button that Amey's had installed on all company cabs a year earlier. Residents on Durham Street heard shouts for help and the squealing of tires as his white Impala sped away.
Alerted by Osborn, police and fellow drivers were quickly on the scene. They found Krick on the sidewalk dying of multiple stab wounds to the chest. One of them pierced his heart.
While a police officer carried out chest compressions driver Shelley Scott applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "I was doing what I could to help," she said. "It seemed like forever, but I bet it was only a couple of seconds, or a minute or something, and the ambulance arrived and [paramedics] took over." Krick was rushed to Kingston General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Meanwhile Osborn tracked the stolen cab and relayed its position to police. The suspect drove south, north and west along various streets before heading toward the An Clachan apartment complex eight blocks away. A patrol car arrived just as a white male, aged 20 to 30, fled from the cab into the labyrinth of low-rise buildings. The area was quickly cordoned off but the suspect managed to elude police.
The abandoned cab was analysed as a second crime scene. Blood on the rear passenger-side door indicated that Krick had been attacked from the back seat.
David Krick's funeral took place on Friday, June 22. Most of Kingston's taxi drivers joined the funeral procession. One of them was the driver who moved from 7 zone to 5 zone on the fatal morning:
"Almost all of Kingston's aprox 180 cabs were in the funeral procession that went about 5 km north of the city. When people see a funeral procession they don't always know who it is for, but in this case they all knew.
"Because of that, most of the cars pulled over and a lot of them got out of their cars and work vehicles and stood there for the full procession to go by. Most pedestrians stopped and a lot of people came out of their houses to watch. That was nice to see in a day and age where most people don't pull over for funerals. Most understood the violent way in which he died and felt the family's pain."
One of Krick's regular passengers posted her condolences on the Whig-Standard web site:
"I have taken a taxi for many of the years David has driven. Every time he picked me up, he remembered who I was, asked with deep concern how my health was holding up. He was a great listener and as I left the car, he always gave my hand a gentle squeeze as he wished me a better lot in life. I left that cab every time with a smile. Knowing him was a pleasure and I will miss him. I wish strength and love during this hard time for his family and friends."
On the day of the funeral police released a description of the suspect and a map showing the route taken by the stolen cab. Prospects seemed favourable for a quick arrest. The officer who saw the suspect fleeing from the cab got a fairly good description of him and three fingerprints were found in smears of blood on the car's rear door.
Police were hopeful that the fugitive would soon be spotted or that an anonymous tip would disclose his identity. But nearly four frustrating months would pass before there was a break in the case. Appeals to the public turned up no useful information. Police concluded that someone was helping the suspect stay hidden.
As far as anyone could remember, Krick was the first Kingston taxi driver to be killed on the job. His death sent shock waves through Kingston and brought the issue of taxi driver safety onto the front pages. Newspaper articles reviewed recent taxi robberies and attacks, reported on safety measures instituted in other cities and interviewed drivers for their ideas and opinions on the subject.
At its regular meeting on June 27 the Kingston Area Taxi Commission formed a special 12-member subcommittee to deal with the safety issue and to come up with proposals by mid-August. The subcommittee included the owners of the three largest Kingston taxi companies and six other owner-drivers. It scheduled a public meeting on July 9 to discuss shields, cameras and other options.
In August Amey's Taxi and Wisky Willy's restaurant held a fund-raising benefit for Shirley Krick, but otherwise there was little news about the murder. Police were unable to report any progress during July, August and September. Tips had completely dried up.
In early October Krick's fellow drivers launched a campaign to refocus public attention on the case and to prod the memories or consciences of anyone with information. Kingston cabs began displaying black, white and yellow bumper stickers with David Krick's name, his birth and death date, his cab number (71) and the epitaph "Let his spirit ride with you." The sticker was designed by Krick's family.
Whether or not the bumper sticker had an effect, police arrested a 31-year-old inmate of Collins Bay Penitentiary on October 9. The man had been serving a sentence of four years and eight months for sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and robbery. He was let out on full parole in May, 2005. Parole was revoked two months later but he was again released in October, 2005. He was rearrested for a parole violation on August 1, 2007, two weeks after Krick's murder. The man's 39-year-old common law wife was arrested as an accessory but released on $5,000 bail on November 21.
Two penitentiaries (Kingston and Collins Bay) and four other penal institutions (Millhaven, Bath, Joyceville and Pittsburgh) are located in the Kingston vicinity. At a the news conference held to announce the arrests police chief Bill Closs "sounded off on the high price citizens pay in a city that houses so many prisons."
"I believe David Krick would be alive today if Kingston were not the prison capital of Canada. David would be alive today if Corrections Canada could better rehabilitate people, if Canada did not have a revolving door leading in and out of the criminal justice system and David Krick would be alive today if Kingston Police could monitor every violent offender 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is the cost of prisons to all of us who live in Kingston.... It cost David Krick his life. It cost his family a son, a brother, [an uncle]. It cost the taxi industry a friend and employee. It cost my police department 4,500 staff hours. It has cost Kingston taxpayers just under $200,000 with more to come."
On December 29, 2007, the Taxi Commission announced that the Krick murder was an "isolated incident" that did not justify mandating safety measures in Kingston cabs. The commission endorsed the recomendation of the safety subcommittee that the installation of safety equipment, such as cameras or shields, be voluntary. Part of the subcommittee's six-month study involved a survey of taxi drivers. Only 49 of Kingston's approximately 300 drivers responded to the study. Subcommittee chair Doug Cox, owner of Amherst Taxi, said that "the best response came from owners, who did not believe the Krick murder was a sign of widespread problems."
See also several news articles on the murder of David Krick in the Taxi-Library Memoriam section.
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