Two more cabbies attacked

OSAKA (Kyodo) Two cab drivers were assaulted early Tuesday in Osaka Prefecture, but the cases are not believed related to two recent slayings of taxi drivers and a robbery in the Kansai region.

Police arrested temp worker Masahito Sawamura, 23, for inflicting minor injuries on Hirofumi Minamoto, a 53-year-old cab driver, with a box cutter in Neyagawa and trying to run away without paying his fare.

Later in the day, police arrested newspaper deliveryman Haruki Kyo, 24, in connection with a knife assault on 33-year-old driver Hideyasu Asada in Takatsuki.

In the Takatsuki incident, the driver was slightly injured in the neck and the robber ran away without paying a ¥2,600 fare, the police said.

The police believe the two incidents are not related to the previous Kansai-area cases. A 67-year-old taxi driver was found slain and his fares stolen in Higashiosaka on Dec. 29. The same day, a 54-year-old driver was found dead in his cab in a parking lot in Inebi, Hyogo Prefecture. He had been stabbed in the neck and some money was missing from his taxi.

A 61-year-old taxi driver was slashed in the neck and robbed of some ¥25,000 in his cab in Matsubara, Osaka Prefecture, on Monday.

Police believe the assaults in Higashiosaka and Matsubara may have been carried out by the same person because of the similarities in the way the two drivers were injured with a knife. Also, the two points where the suspect caught the taxis are only 1.5 km apart, they said.

Taxi companies are trying to beef up security by installing a partition between the driver and the rear seats. In Osaka, only 15 percent of taxis have such partitions, far lower than the 78 percent in Tokyo, an industry group said.

Setting up a security camera inside taxis would be another option, but this raises cost and privacy concerns, taxi operators said.