Francisco José Jiménez has been a taxi driver for 25 years in Vélez-Málaga but this was the first time that he had had one of his taxis stolen.
It happened one Wednesday around four in the afternoon when one of the drivers who worked for him had picked up a passenger to be taken from Torre del Mar to Marbella – no problem.
However, on the way he was getting short on fuel so he pulled off the autovia at a service station in Cajiz. It was while he was out of the taxi arranging to fill up that the passenger slipped into the driver’s seat and drove off…
Rapidly the driver got in contact with his boss, Francisco, who in turn contacted other taxi drivers in Marbella to keep and eye out for his car. He also reported the theft to the police, obviously.
The car was tracked down to an area of Marbella known as El Ángel around 23.00h, where it had been abandoned. The car had suffered minor damage because the man had ripped off the taxi light from the roof of the vehicle.
The car thief, a Romanian resident, was tracked after he pulled into a gasolinera in Benalmádena but drove off without paying after filling up with 85-euros’ worth of diesel.
The end result is that Francisco got his taxi back but the driver was sacked, “The driver made the mistake of not charging part of the fare before setting off, which is normal on a long ride, explained Francisco adding, “You never fill up with a passenger onboard – you do it between fares.”
(News: Torre del Mar, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)