Cabbies Visit Fallen Driver, Knowing They Could Be Next : Violence: Man is hospitalized after being shot twice by a passenger. ‘It’s like open season on cabdrivers,’ a police investigator says.

There are days when Jim Silcox dreams of calling it quits as a cabdriver, and Friday was one of them.

“You take a guy who’s trying to scratch out a living and someone shoots him for a few bucks. It makes you think,” said the 35-year-old cabby, reflecting on the latest in a series of violent attacks on Los Angeles cabdrivers. Like a dozen other cabbies who converged on a Westside hospital Friday, Silcox passed up potential fares to visit his fallen colleague. One cabby brought a large bouquet.

Authorities said Christopher Nwankpele, 34, was shot twice in the abdomen at close range early Thursday by a man who robbed him of $150 on a Westside street. On Friday, he was reported in serious but stable condition at Midway Hospital.

It was the third such attack in recent days.

“Suddenly, it’s like open season on cabdrivers,” Los Angeles Police Detective Gil Jones said. “These things seem to occur in cycles.”

On May 1, Titus Imaku, 35, was found shot to death in a South Los Angeles alley. He apparently had been robbed of less than $30. And on Tuesday, another cabby, Beltazar Munguia, 56, was seriously wounded by a man who got into his cab in Hollywood and stole $80.

The most recent victim, Nwankpele, who moved here from Nigeria 10 years ago, was surprisingly talkative as he greeted well-wishers from his hospital bed Friday and recounted his ordeal.

“I let the guy out and I thought he was going to run away without paying the fare,” Nwankpele said. “I got out of the car and said, ‘You going to pay me, right?’ And he said, ‘No, you’re going to pay me,’ and that’s when he fired.”

Shot twice, Nwankpele managed to climb back in the car and drive two miles to the hospital’s emergency room, where he was helped inside by a parking lot attendant.

In 10 years on the job, he said, he had never had a problem before.

“But that’s it for me,” the wounded cabby vowed. “Time to look for something else.”

Many of the city’s 3,000 licensed cabdrivers have come to know this cycle of violence all too well.

“People realize cops have dangerous jobs. And firemen. But in case nobody has noticed, it’s a jungle out there for us cabdrivers,” said fellow cabby Silcox, an aspiring songwriter and guitarist who moved here from Pennsylvania in 1983. As cabdrivers go, he is considered a veteran despite only eight years on the job.

Cab company officials attribute the high turnover rate among drivers to the constant threat of harm.

“We lose people who can take the hours and the economic uncertainty--the up and down days--but can’t deal with the threat of danger hanging over them,” said Paul Neuman, an official with Bell Cab Co., where Silcox and the latest wounded cabby work.

Despite having been robbed twice at gunpoint, Silcox counts himself lucky.

“I try to be careful. Size people up. And there are some parts of town I won’t go late at night,” he said as he cruised Fairfax Boulevard near Farmers Market, between fares.

“Eight years ago times were good and you didn’t have many problems,” he said. “Now a lot of people are having it rough and some of them are bent on doing crazy things. . . .

“One minute you’re riding down Rodeo Drive with a nice lady, but the next person you pick up may want to stick a gun in your back. You can never be sure.”

While escaping unharmed in his own scrapes with armed robbers, Silcox blames the potential of violence for helping break up his marriage of more than five years.

“My wife hounded me forever to quit. All cabbies’ wives do. And then a year ago last February, after I was held up the second time, she just said, ‘That’s it. I can’t live like this anymore.’ We split up three months later.”

So why does he continue?

“It’s a living, and as much as I’d like to do something else, well, jobs don’t grow on trees.”