Another cabby suicide
Hack faced lease woes
Another cash-strapped city cabby has committed suicide, this time by hanging himself in his Brooklyn apartment, The Post has learned.
Abdul Saleh, 59, is now at least the sixth for-hire driver to kill himself since November, sources say.
A roommate found him hanging by an electrical cord in his apartment in Flatlands Friday morning, said his driving partner, Qamar Chaudhary.
Saleh drove a yellow cab for 30 years, Chaudhary, 36, said.
Chaudhary said that they leased a taxi and medallion together, splitting the night and day shifts, but that within the past several months, Saleh couldn’t make the weekly lease payment.
Saleh — whom Chaudhary described as single but with family in his native Yemen — sometimes would be short by as little as $60, but for the last payment, he was $300 short.
Making finances even tighter, Chaudhary began driving for Uber, leaving Saleh without a partner.
Chaudhary said he last spoke to Saleh three or four days ago.
“He sounded upset and depressed,” Chaudhary recalled. “He said he didn’t feel good.”
“I know he wasn’t making enough money to pay his lease,” he said. “He was short here and there, and I used to have to help him out. He said he didn’t know how to survive.”
New York Taxi Workers Alliance director Bhairavi Desai lamented the plight of Saleh and others facing rising competition from ride-hailing services.
“These drivers can no longer see retirement in sight and can’t imagine continuing to work such a grueling job until their last day on earth,” she said. In the past eight months, five other cab and livery drivers have killed themselves in the face of financial strain.
In May, cabby Yu Mein “Kenny” Chow flung himself in the East River off the Upper East Side.
In March, cabby Nicanor Ochisor, 65, hanged himself in his garage in Maspeth, Queens.
In the most dramatic case, livery driver Douglas Schifter killed himself with a shotgun outside City Hall on Feb. 5.
He left a Facebook post reading, “I don’t know how else to make a difference other than a public display of a most private affair.”