Cabbie chases suspect after knifepoint robbery

Driver Joe Cu is robbed at knifepoint in a bank parking lot

A 37-year-old taxicab driver said he tried to run down the man who robbed him, but that the suspect got away by running through the streets of Kalihi early yesterday.

The robbery marks the third attack on Honolulu taxi drivers in a little more than a month, but this time Central Taxi driver Joe Cu said he was lucky. While the attacks have left one taxi driver dead and another with a gunshot to his neck, the worst Cu said he suffered was a cut on his left hand.

"The knife was very sharp; I just touched it a little bit and blood was coming out," Cu said. "This guy acted so smart, so experienced, not nervous at all.

"I think he's going to do it another time, and this time the driver is not going to be lucky."

While a suspect was arrested in the first taxi driver attack, police are not sure whether the second and third incidents were related. Both incidents happened in bank parking lots at night.

The first taxi attack involved 23-year-old suspect Adam Mau-Goffredo, who on July 6 allegedly shot The Cab taxivan driver Manh Nguyen and Jason and Colleen Takamori at Tantalus Lookout. Mau-Goffredo allegedly stole Nguyen's van, drove it to a nearby residence and tied three people up at gunpoint and stole a Jaguar. Mau-Goffredo has since been charged and held without bail on three counts of second-degree murder.

In the second attack, taxi driver Yu Kyo Kim, 52, also a driver with The Cab, was shot in the neck on Friday. Police said Kim was shot by an unknown suspect who stole his taxivan and left the victim outside the Pearlridge branch of First Hawaiian Bank at 98-1071 Moanalua Road.

Police found a handgun on the ground next to the victim back at the scene of the shooting and recovered Kim's van in Kailua. Kim's condition has since been stabilized and he is recovering at the Queen's Medical Center.

The attack on Cu happened at 12:25 a.m. yesterday, in the rear parking lot of the Bank of Hawaii at 1617 Dillingham Blvd.

Cu said he assumed the suspect was going to get out of his vehicle to get some money at the automated teller machine when all of a sudden he felt something sharp poke him on the right side of his ribs.

"He said, 'This is a robbery, give me all your money,'" Cu said. "The first thing I thought of was the shootings."

Cu said he pulled out all the money from his pocket, about $175, and gave it to the suspect.

"I said, 'This is all my money, so just leave me alone,'" he said.

However, he said the suspect then wanted to be dropped off somewhere else, so he followed his directions and drove to Kalani Street, where he stopped his Lincoln Town Car and the suspect started to get out.

That's when Cu said he felt the knife pull away from him a little bit, and he floored it.

"I felt a little safe and I speed up and took off and he jumped out," he said. "I made a U-turn back and he was running.

"I tried to hit him but he disappeared ... near the corner of Kalani and McNeill (Street)."

The whole time the robbery was happening, Cu thought about the previous shootings and noted that the man who got into his car was never nervous, he said.

From the time Cu said he picked up the suspect near Kalakaua Avenue and Kapiolani Boulevard, he said the robber did and said things to put him at ease.

"He told me 'Thank you, I'm late,'" Cu said. He also recalled that the suspect had a phone conversation on his cell phone with someone he assumed was his girlfriend or wife as Cu drove to the suspect's destination, Dillingham and Kalihi Street.

"He say 'honey' and 'I love you' and 'I'm kind of late for work, I'm taking a cab now,'" Cu said. "The way he was talking in my car he was really nice, I thought he just a normal guy."

The suspect was described as in his late 20s, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, 160 pounds, and had black short hair. He was last seen wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans and had a black backpack.

Cu said he's been driving for Central for a couple of years and was with Rainbow Taxi before that for almost a dozen years as a cab driver. He said he's been robbed once before, but it was nothing like this.

"That guy was nervous," he said. "This guy was cool. You can tell he do this before."