Tonight, we have the city's first gun murder in 18 days to report - and it is another taxi-man - the second city cabbie to be killed in six weeks.
This time, the victim is 48 year old Santiago Rodriguez who was found dead in his vehicle on Unity Street this afternoon. According to reports, residents in the area a heard a single gunshot at around 10:00 this morning. But - at the time - nobody checked to see what happened until around 2 in the afternoon, when somebody noticed his lifeless body slumped over in the driver's seat, and a bullet-hole through the windshield.
Superintendent Alejandro Cowo spoke to us at the scene told us the findings of the preliminary investigations...
Insp. Alejandro Cowo, Southside Police
"Sometime after 2:30 today, we received information of a male person inside of a vehicle. As a result we proceeded to Unity Street where we found a male person inside of his vehicle, a white 4Runner, apparently with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. The information we have so far is that he had left from his house sometime this morning and normally he was doing his taxi runs when sometime after 10am or 11am in the morning a gunshot was heard in this area, but apparently somebody discovered the person inside the vehicle sometime after 2:30 this afternoon. The person has been identified as Santiago Rodriguez of a Tigres Street address."
Reporter
"Would that suggest that he was inside the vehicle all this while until 2:30 when he was found?"
Insp. Alejandro Cowo, Southside Police
"Yes he was inside of the vehicle from this morning."
Reporter
"And the ignition on."
Insp. Alejandro Cowo, Southside Police
"No, the vehicle was not running."
Reporter
"I know it's preliminary, because you guys just processed the scene, but what is the investigation showing so far?"
Insp. Alejandro Cowo, Southside Police
"Well so far we can tell you at this moment is that apparently it look like a robbery. There are some items missing from the male person, but yet we are confirming and at this moment we are searching the vehicle to see if we could find other things that belongs to him. We suspect that the person that did the vehicle was inside the vehicle behind the driver's seat."
Police found one expended shell inside the vehicle. No suspects have been identified yet. Taxi-man Elbert Gillett was found dead in early March. Both he and Rodriguez were shot in the head.
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