2nd suicide of a cabbie in econ woe
THE NEW economic pitfalls that a for-hire car driver cited before dramatically killing himself outside City Hall on Monday were also blamed for a suicide just weeks earlier.
About six weeks before a desperate Doug Schifter pulled up to City Hall and shot himself in the face with a rifle, another driver leaped off the roof of a Manhattan building, distraught over lost business, costly fines and a threatened license revocation.
On Dec. 20, hours after a hearing about the Taxi & Limousine Commission’s threat to take away his license, Danilo Castillo (photo), 57, plunged from the roof of his W. 135th St. building after calling his wife. In his pocket, family and cop sources said, was a suicide note scribbled on a TLC notification that pinned his final, desperate act to his angst with the agency.
“He had just gotten home from an appointment with the taxi people,” Castillo’s aunt, Miguelina de los Santos, 64, told the Daily News. “He was really upset. He called his wife at work. He told her he owed too much money on tickets. They took away his license. He told her, ‘I’m going to jump from the roof.’
“Then she heard him fall. He jumped off the roof while he was on the phone with her. She is destroyed. His two sons are destroyed, too. They can’t believe it led to this,” the aunt said.
Castillo, a livery driver, had sat through an administrative hearing that day on a charge that he had illegally accepted a street hail — reserved only for yellow and green cabs — while working in the Bronx in September.
He was found guilty of street hails four times — and his latest offense would have been his third conviction within three years. If found guilty, it would mean a $1,500 fine and the revocation of his license.
But Castillo didn’t wait to learn his fate. A day after his death, the agency that had conducted the hearing mailed a notice that cleared him of the most recent charge — and would have allowed him to keep his license.
Weeks later, Schifter, 61, posted a suicide note on Facebook shortly before killing himself, recounting the car industry’s woes — which he laid at the feet of Mayor de Blasio, Gov. Cuomo and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.