My thumb terror
Hero cabbie tells of maiming as he fought carjackers
WHEN LIVERY driver Richard Deleon’s car and passengers were attacked by a knife-wielding teen, he did everything he could to protect his three fares — and his head.
“It happened very fast,” Deleon, 47, recalled of the Nov. 19 horror during a news conference Sunday outside the Bronx district attorney’s office. “I tried to stop the attackers.”
For the father of four, the harrowing episode began near Lehman College as his vehicle was stopped at a red light on Jerome Ave. near E. 198th St. early in the morning.
There, two 17-year-olds, Juan Sanchez and Kenneth Guzman, tried to commandeer his cab, according to authorities.
Sanchez, armed with a machete, cut one of the passengers, before, Deleon says, he desperately pulled him away.
“I raised my hand and they were aiming at my head with the machete and instead they took my (right thumb),” he said in Spanish. He’s thankful to be alive, but is still suffering a little more than a week later.
“I’m not going back to work right now because I’m in a lot of pain and depressed,” he told reporters.
“My whole family is suffering the consequences of losing my finger because my work is what puts food on the table,” he added.
One passenger needed 14 stitches after the attack, but it could have been much worse for her if Deleon had not intervened, said Fernando Mateo, head of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers.
“To us he is a hero because if it wasn’t for him and his intervention, God knows if someone would’ve been killed,” he said.
Mateo and other Deleon supporters were furious that Guzman is out on $2,000 bail.
“He’s laughing at the justice system,” Mateo said. “He’s laughing at the victims that he injured, and this is something that we don’t know or understand how it could happen.”
After his release from jail, Mateo said, Guzman posted on Facebook how happy he was to be home dinner.
Guzman also claims the authorities are unfairly charging him and Sanchez, saying they were trying to make them look “like animals,” according to a screen grab of the Facebook post shared by Mateo.
The posts have deleted.
On Sunday, Deleon’s sister Fary, 48, said she’s happy her brother is still alive.
“We just want justice,” she said. “What they did to my brother is not fair. He was working. He didn’t hurt nobody.”
Fary Deleon and others want to make sure the teens are punished so they can’t hurt others.
“We don’t want no other family to go through what we’re going through right now,” she said.
The teens — who were caught close to the cab — face charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon. for Thanksgiving since been