Alan Martin-MacDonald, 58, drove for Surdell Taxi which operates in Surrey and Delta, two cities on the south bank of the Fraser River that form part of Metropolitan Vancouver. He was divorced but kept in touch with his two adult children. His daughter Michelle described him as "far more than just a cab driver. He was a loving father and provided an important service as 'a carrier of people.' Some of his trips included transporting cancer patients to their appointments as well as delivering battered women and children to safety in the middle of the night." Mr. Martin-MacDonald had lived in the same rented apartment for the past six years. The apartment manager described him as "the nicest man in the world." Mr. Martin-MacDonald worked for Surdell for nearly 16 years and was no stranger to the rough side of taxi driving. In 1994 he was badly beaten after he ordered two abusive drunks out of his cab. One of the men pulled a knife and as the driver fled he heard a voice shout "Kill the old man!" Mr. Martin-MacDonald was kicked about 30 times and suffered two broken ribs, two crushed ribs, a broken nose, a broken tooth, injuries to his ears and eyes and multiple cuts and bruises. Luckily he was able to radio for help before bailing out of the cab and other drivers came to his rescue. They captured the assailants before they could get away. The perpetrators were acquitted partly because Mr. Martin-MacDonald didn't get a clear enough look at them for a positive identification, but the judge also blamed the police for not comparing any of the suspects' shoes to a clear Nike footprint stamped on the victim's forehead, and for not testing their clothes for traces of his blood. In 1999 Mr. Martin-MacDonald was lauded for his role in the capture of a violent rapist. The man posed as a courier to gain entry into a woman's apartment and then raped and tortured her. Mr. Martin-MacDonald recognized the man's description as resembling a passenger that he had dropped off near the crime scene not long before the woman was attacked. He accompanied police officers as they knocked on doors near the pickup point and eventually found the suspect. At around seven o'clock on the evening of Saturday, March 4, 2000, Mr. Martin-MacDonald was dispatched to the 11400 block of 73rd Avenue in Delta, a quiet residential area. He liked to greet his passengers and open the car door for them, so this may be why he was found outside the cab. The killer shot him once in the side and then shot him twice in the chest as he lay in the street. The gunfire aroused the neighbours who saw a man in dark clothes running from the scene. Although mortally wounded, Mr. Martin-MacDonald was able to give a good description of the killer to witnesses. He died before the ambulance got him to a hospital. Mr. Martin-MacDonald's death came less than a year after the murder of Vancouver taxi driver Mehdi Nasnain Naqvi on March 18, 1999. Mr. Naqvi's killer had been arrested but not yet tried and convicted. Once again the murder of a cab driver provoked much discussion of safety measures and once again the discussion was not matched by action. British Columbia Premier Ujjal Dosanjh called on the federal government to enact stiffer penalties for violence against cab drivers, although a similar call in 1998 when he was B.C. Attorney-General came to nothing. During his tenure as Attorney-General, Mr. Dosanjh also established a provincial committee to explore options for cab driver safety. The committee recommended bullet-proof shields and digital cameras as options but did not recommend that cab companies be offered financial assistance to install them. John Palis, general manager of Maclure's Taxi and coordinator of the Vancouver Taxi Association, said he intended to continue lobbying the provincial government for money to install cameras. Mohan Kang of the British Columbia Taxi Association said that GPS dispatch systems were another potential safety option, noting that a Victoria, B.C. cab company had implemented a GPS system that incorporated an emergency alarm button. However Mr. Kang dismissed the idea of installing shields because retrofitting reduced space inside cabs and in any case shields were liable to give the "wrong message" to customers. Shields in the cabs could give tourists the impression that B.C. is not the place they should be visiting, he said. Mr. Martin-MacDonald's death also came during a rash of cab driver robberies. Vancouver police reported that some 40 robberies had occurred between December, 1999 and February, 2000, about 30 of which they attributed to two white male suspects. These particular robberies came to a sudden end in February, apparently because the two suspects either "moved to a different municipality, were arrested on another offence, or were nervous of the media attention." Another half dozen robberies followed a common MO: the perpetrator forced the drivers out of their cabs after robbing them and then abandoned the cabs downtown, presumably somewhere close to a drug supplier. One victim was 50-year-old Black Top driver Mohammad Namin, who picked up a white male at the Patricia Hotel in east Vancouver. The man threatened Mr. Namin with a knife or syringe, robbed him of $30, and drove away. This incident revealed a limitation of GPS as a safety device. Black Top had installed a GPS system "for safety and operational reasons" and a dispatcher was able to track the stolen cab for 45 minutes as it made its way toward downtown Vancouver. Police were kept informed of the cab's progress but for some reason did not chase after it. When the cab was finally retrieved Mr. Namin had to do without it for an extra day while it was searched for fingerprints. A third "handful" of robberies were all carried out by an Indo-Canadian man. These robberies would be solved at the same time as Mr. Martin-MacDonald's murder. Meanwhile, a memorial service for the murdered taxi driver was held a few days after his death. About 300 people attended and about 150 cabs, with black ribbons tied to their aerials, formed a kilometer-long procession. The procession was led by Mr. Martin-MacDonald's Surdell cab, driven by the man he shared it with, Raj Heer. "It is very scary for me," said Mr. Heer. "I did not want to get into it because ... you know." As it turned out, Mr. Martin-MacDonald's murder was one especially savage episode in a brutal crime spree that began three months earlier, in December, 1999. Sadly, his murder was not the last episode, nor the only death. On December 21, 1999, Mr. Martin-MacDonald's killer and an accomplice hijacked a Mercury Grand Marquis, forcing its 78-year-old owner out of the car. Then, in the early hours of December 22, they rammed the car into the barred doors of a sporting goods store, forcing the bars apart just enough to gain entry. They smashed the handgun case and stole two .357 calibre pistols, a Colt Python and a Ruger Blackhawk. Police arrived five minutes after the break-in, but by then the culprits had escaped on foot. The killer now carried out a series of six robberies, in two of which he used one of the guns. On January 20, 2000, in Richmond, Richmond Cabs driver Frank Dawson and Kimber Cabs driver Arne Sanders were both robbed. Mr. Sanders was robbed at gunpoint. At first he could not believe it was happening. [Next column]

Map showing a portion of Metropolitan Vancouver, including Richmond, Delta, White Rock and parts of Surrey and the City of Vancouver. (Source map: Wikipedia, "Location of University Endowment Lands within the Greater Vancouver Regional District....") "I said you've gotta be kidding, and I turned around and I looked at his face and then I looked at the gun and I go `ugh."' Five days later, on January 25, Mr. Sanders got another shock when he saw the same robber, dressed in the same clothes, trying to flag him down. He drove on by and notified the police, but Mr. Martin-MacDonald's killer was gone by the time officers arrived. Also on January 25 the killer robbed two more cab drivers in Vancouver, Majed Khansa and Black Top driver Tarlok Singh. Mr. Singh was also robbed at gunpoint. He had driven for Black Top for two and a half years and said he came to Canada in 1992 from India, thinking he was moving to safe country. He was working the night shift when he was dispatched to the 5300 block of Lanark. A man approached and asked him to roll down the driver's window. He told Mr. Singh that two more men were coming and asked him to wait. Suddenly the man poked a large handgun through the window and threatened to shoot Mr. Singh if he did not turn over his cash. Mr. Singh handed him $35 or $45 and drove off. He reported the holdup and circled the block, but by the time he got back to the scene the man was gone. On January 26, the day after, Mr. Singh and Mr. Khansa were robbed, the killer returned to Richmond, robbing Richmond Cabs driver Moniruzzam Choudhury. Then he moved on to Delta where he robbed Highway Whalley driver Muhammad Kamran. Nine days later, on March 4, the series of robberies escalated to murder with the death of Mr. Martin-MacDonald. The murder was followed by a six-week hiatus. Then, on Monday, April 17 the killer gunned down a young man named Kristopher Neeves, using the same weapon that had killed the cab driver. Mr. Neeves, 21 years old, was a student at Vancouver's Trebas Institute where he was studying film production. According to friends he had two passions in life, skateboarding and film-making. Mr. Neeves lived in Vancouver but he regularly visited his mother who lived on scenic Marine Drive in White Rock. At 9:30 p.m. left his mother's home with a duffle bag she had packed with clean laundry and some food. He walked across Marine Drive to a bus stop which commanded a stunning view of Semiahmoo Bay. Mr. Neeves leaned his skateboard against the bus stop signpost and was rummaging in his duffle bag when the killer approached and shot him once in the abdomen. Joe Odin, a neighbour, was startled by the loud gun shot. Then he heard Mr. Neeves shouting "Help! Help! Phone 911!" Mr Odin and other neighbours converged on the bus stop and tried to render first aid. At least one witness saw a man in dark clothes running away from the scene. Moments later Susan Neeves came out of her house to see why a crowd was gathered at the bus stop and found her only child dying of a gunshot wound. "All of a sudden she started to scream," said Mr. Odin, Mr. Neeves was rushed to hospital but died while undergoing emergency surgery. Two days after the murder of Mr. Neeves a task force was formed comprising 50 police officers from Delta, Surrey, Vancouver and the RCMP. The killer was already on police radar as a person of interest after Mr. Martin-MacDonald's death and evidence gathered after Mr. Neeves's death made him the prime suspect in both killings. On May 2, 2000 a heavily armed police surveillance team arrested the killer as he walked in downtown White Rock. A search of his mother's White Rock home, where he lived off and on, uncovered the two handguns stolen from the sporting goods store. The killer confessed to both killings but expressed no remorse. The killer claimed that he shot Mr. Martin-MacDonald when the cab driver walked toward him and disobeyed a command to stop. He claimed to have shot Mr. Neeves because the young man aroused his suspicions by looking at him and then rummaging in his duffle bag. Details of the investigation were not made public. Evidence given in court by an undercover police officer was made subject to a publication ban to protect his identify. Police claimed that the killer was the sole suspect the cab robberies and murders although he had an accomplice in the sporting goods store break-in. However Arne Sanders, the cab driver who encountered the killer on two occasions, doubted that the man acted alone. While being held up on January 20, Mr. Sanders saw a second man watching from the shadows. On January 25, when the same robber tried to flag him down, Mr. Sanders again saw a second man standing nearby. When Mr. Sanders made a U-turn to get a better look, he saw one of the men walk into a cul de sac from which two cars emerged moments later, one right after the other. The killer was convicted of Mr. Martin-MacDonald's murder in November, 2001. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for thirteen years. The killer appealed the conviction on the grounds that incriminating statements he made to the police should not have been admitted as evidence. The appeal was dismissed. In March, 2002, the killer was convicted of murdering Kristopher Neeves and in June he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility for parole for 20 years. The jury had recommended 25 years. As required by Canadian law, the two life sentences were to be served concurrently as far as parole eligibility was concerned, so that the killer was eligible for parole after 20 years -- not 33 years -- for the two murders.