Taxi driver afraid before being shot

Man says passengers acted bizarrely as police warn public over alleged gunman

The Wellington taxi driver shot in the shoulder last weekend was already afraid of his passengers’ erratic behaviour before the attack. Alem Tessema said the passengers were “hiding” in the back seats of the taxi wearing sunglasses when he was driving them from Courtenay Place to Miramar on Saturday night.

They made Tessema drive in circles around Miramar before telling him where to drop them, he told the Herald.

“I [was] just thinking . . . what I’m going to do now? Wherever we go, then he’s telling me right, left, right.”

When they finally gave him an address to stop at, Tessema said the pair got out of the car without paying. He never chases people for their fare, for his own safety.

“I never chase no one about the money . . . all my time in taxi. The money is come, is go, it doesn’t bother me, money, at all. Someone run I don’t follow them at all.”

But then the male passenger, believed to be 26-year-old Dylan Nuku, came around to the driver’s side of the car and pointed a pistol at Tessema.

“He tell me ‘ get off the car, get off the car’ and then same times he shoot me in here. I just drive out because that’s only option for me to survive . . . if I didn’t do that I would be dying.

“I’m very lucky I didn’t get shot in my head.”

Tessema didn’t realise he had been hit until he touched his shoulder and found he was bleeding everywhere.

He pulled into a petrol station where two women rushed to his aid.

“Those women, for me, they are angels, really.”

The women went to visit Tessema Alem Tessema said, although injured, he had to drive off to save his own life. in hospital, with friends, co-workers, and members of the Ethiopian community in Wellington.

While the support has been “awesome”, Tessema is still bewildered about the attack.

“He didn’t give any excuse or anything at all. Someone you never know before, you never seen in life, they’re gunning you. What for? I don’t know this guy, never seen in my life, really. I never done anything wrong to him.”

He has been driving taxis since 2004 and had never been attacked by passengers before.

Tessema said he would not go back to driving a taxi after the incident, but was not sure what he would do instead.

He believes all taxis must have cameras and panic buttons, and police must respond immediately to incidents reported by taxi drivers.

Police have searched a number of properties in the hunt for Nuku and have urged him to hand himself in.

Anyone who sees him should not approach as he is considered armed and dangerous. They should call 111 immediately. A pencil drawing by renowned New Zealand artist Charles Goldie which has never been seen in public will be up for sale for the first time next week.

The drawing of Maori guide Sophia has been in Goldie’s family since the artist finished it in 1931 and is being offered for sale by a member of Goldie’s family at the International Art Centre’s sale of Important and Rare Art in Auckland next week.

Guide Sophia won international acclaim for guiding tourists over the Pink and White Terraces before they were destroyed by the deadly eruption of Mt Tarawera which killed 150 people in 1886. The drawing was done for his mother, Maria Partington, who was 93 when she died seven years later in 1938.

Director Richard Thomson said the drawing of Guide Sophia had never been out of the Goldie family and had never been publicly exhibited.

“This is the first time since Goldie finished it that it has been seen on public display and I don’t think that can be said about any other Goldie work of art.”

The sale also includes two historic photographs of the artist at work in his studio, two Goldie paintings and other memorabilia including two certificates of merit awarded to Goldie when he was 13 and 14, and six sepia photographs of his paintings, including one which now hangs in Treaty House, Waitangi.

The pencil drawing of Guide Sophia was expected to bring up to $40,000 and each photograph was expected to bring up to $3500 at the sale on Monday. — Amy Wiggins