Aston Beadle?s doorstep turned out to be the wrong place at the wrong time.
The 63-year-old cab driver was critically shot stepping out of his taxi at his Windsor Mill home Wednesday. Beadle?s fellow drivers at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport pleaded Monday for the public?s help in nabbing the culprit.
“You work all day, and you come home and think you?re safe,” cabbie Clinton Buise said. “If your own front door is the wrong place at the wrong time, that?s devastating.”
Beadle had just arrived home from work 10 p.m. Wednesday when a man approached, pointed a handgun at his head and demanded money, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey said Monday. When Beadle told the gunman he had no money, the attacker shot him in the abdomen and fled.
Airport cabbies described Beadle ? who remained in stable condition Monday at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center ? as a quiet Jamaican immigrant and family man. They said cabbies are particularly vulnerable to attacks.
“When you decide to bea cabbie, you accept to be with all different kinds of people,” driver Russell Brannan said. “Cab drivers carry money, and it?s a known fact.”
The shooting was strikingly similar to an attack on a taxi driver Dec. 16, Toohey said. At 4:30 that morning, the driver took an apparent customer to a Windsor Mill intersection. The customer produced a handgun and demanded money, Toohey said.
The driver got out of the cab, then the suspect followed, Toohey said. The driver jumped back in and the suspect shot him in the leg as the cab took off.
The suspects in both shootings are described as a male about 16 to 20 years old. Police are investigating a possible connection, and anyone with information should call 410-307-2020.
