Taxi Killer

There are moments in life that shape a person forever. I, too, had some of these experiences, but no more than a handful of them have influenced my perspective as much as what I would like to tell you about today.

I grew up in a modern German suburb in the 70s. The mood back then was also one of awakening and change. Starting in 1959, the city planners had not only planned a new district on the drawing board, but wanted to change the way people lived together. In this respect, the place where I lived at that time had a model character and was supposed to lead us into a new and, today one would say, more inclusive form of a community. At that time, this meant bringing people of different social status together in one place and thus creating a society without social boundaries. A nice idea, but unfortunately it went completely off the rails over time. I suppose that’s where my aversion to the ideas of self-proclaimed social engineers comes from. Humans are and remain humans and a large part of our behaviour is evolutionary and biologically predetermined and cannot be changed in short periods of time, and by that I mean at least several hundred years.

Nevertheless, it was a very nice childhood and youth. The district was designed in such a way that you could get to any place without necessarily having to cross a street, which was very reassuring to our parents. And it was also the first district in which a rigorous speed limit was introduced. In addition, there were surrounding fields, a nearby forest and two quarry ponds, one of which was soon converted into a bathing lake.
Actually, it was an almost paradisiacal place for children at that time and we travelled in large groups, as mostly young families lived here in the beginning and could live in modern rented flats, condominiums, terraced houses or villas, depending on their finances.

One evening in the summer of 1977, it was already dark, I was sitting with my best friend at the time at a bus stop near our house when suddenly a young man ran across the road from across the street, broke through the bushes behind us and crossed the tram tracks behind us. Then he disappeared between the indoor swimming pool behind and the newly built youth centre. It was noticeable that he was wearing a bright red college jacket.

My buddy and I looked at each other, puzzled, and a taxi shot around the bend by our house at an unusual speed and stopped in front of us, tyres screeching. The side window of the car was open and the taxi driver called out to us as he waved us closer: “Did you see a young guy in a red jacket walk past here?”. And when we didn’t answer immediately, he barked “that pig just stabbed one of my colleagues!”. My friend and I looked at each other uncertainly as the driver, a man of about forty, shouted, “Say something!”

We were unsure if we should say anything, but the man seemed so upset that we finally replied “yeah, just now, he took off across the tram tracks.” He now looked at us and thought for a moment, then called out to us “get in guys, we’ll buy this taxi killer”.

I don’t know what moved us, curiosity or sensationalism, but we jumped up and into the waiting taxi. We had not yet closed the doors properly when the taxi driver accelerated at full throttle and sped along the main road at more than 80 km/h, where actually only 30 km/h was allowed. Only now did we notice that the taxi radio was buzzing like a swarm of bees and dozens of voices were alternately giving status reports of the manhunt. Our driver gave the latest location report and as soon as he had hung up the handpiece of his radio again, he rummaged in the glove compartment for something. This did not inspire much confidence as he skidded from one side of the road to the other at over 100km/h by now. When he turned into the destination road and he had to slow down a bit, I could suddenly see in the light of a street lamp the object he had finally dug out of the glove compartment. It was a Walther PPK pistol and it looked damn real.

I poked ,my buddy in the ribs and made a sign with my head in the direction of the pistol. When he saw it, he turned a shade paler. Somehow I had the feeling that we might be getting into a situation that could get out of control. But already the driver made a full stop and skidded onto the lawn of the youth centre. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, he jumped out of the car and shouted “come with me”. I don’t remember why we obeyed him and quickly got out. Then he gave us the order to walk around the building to the left and he would go around to the right. That way we would have the knifeman in our grasp.

I was already a little uncomfortable in my skin, but nevertheless I followed my buddy through the darkness and suddenly we saw the young man, he must have been about 18 years old, crouching in a bush. When he saw us, we were still about five metres away, he jumped up and scurried around the corner of the house. Shortly afterwards we heard the first two shots and as we came around the corner of the house we saw the young man running towards the shopping centre and the taxi driver following behind, aiming his gun and firing another two shots.

As the young man ran into the mall without hesitation, I assumed that he had not been hit. I slowed my pace considerably now and held m,y friend by the arm. “Come on let’s slow down. The whole thing is making me queasy.” Nevertheless, our curiosity was such that we walked more slowly towards the shopping centre. A small road led through the mall, with a few cars parked at the side.

By now, the lower part of the building, which was open on two sides, was filled with men with spanners, clubs and more guns. At that time there had been an increase in robberies of taxi drivers and almost every one of them had a gun licence and a pistol or revolver. Two of the men tampered with a larger vehicle and bent under the car. Suddenly they shouted “we’ve got him!”.

Then everything happened very quickly. They pulled the young man out from under the car and in no time at all, a crowd of at least 20 men had gathered around the man lying on the ground. And then they began to take turns beating the boy with the percussion instruments they had brought with them. Concentrated and systematic. My friend and I could only partially see the boy lying on the ground, so many men had gathered around him and were beating him. The taxi killer’s bloodcurdling screams echoed on the walls of the large, partially open room while two patrol cars stopped. Four policemen jumped out of the car and lined up behind the mob. But they did nothing. Still the boy roared like an animal being slaughtered. But the policemen made no move to intervene. They obviously let the mob vent their rage on the bloody lump that now came into my field of vision from time to time.

I turned away and covered my ears. I was quite a tough young lad of 15, but I could no longer bear these screams, the sight of the faces distorted with rage and the body now just twitching on the ground. Until a few minutes ago, the whole thing was just a little adventure for me. Now the realisation that something cruel and deeply wrong was happening here hit me like a sledgehammer.

Obviously the adrenaline and cortisol in my body had gone and all I felt was horror, pity and shame. I looked at my buddy and I saw in his eyes that he felt the same. The two tough guys from the suburbs, had suddenly become very quiet and small. It was clear to both of us at that moment that this experience would stay with us for the rest of our lives.

The realisation that we had unawares become involved in something that was clearly EVIL shook us to our foundations. We both went home quietly and did not want to think about it any more.

The next day, the story caught up with us again. There was an article in our local newspaper reporting that after a taxi driver was assaulted and murdered, a young American from the nearby US Army garrison was mistakenly identified as the perpetrator, chased and then beaten so badly by a mob that he was now in intensive care. The real perpetrator had been arrested that morning and had since confessed.

My learnings:
- Don’t make quick judgements
- Check your instincts, especially when you believe you are in the right.
- Distrust the majority and the “obvious”