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Community reacts to violent murder of cab driver

332 views · Published 10 April 2014 · 3:15 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: LOCAL 12 · 2014 · News & Politics

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CINCINNATI (Rich Jaffe) -- Cincinnati homicide detectives have spent the day trying to figure out who shot and killed a cab driver in North Fairmount early Wednesday morning. 

Mamadou Diop was found behind the wheel of a Ran's Cab on Baltimore Avenue Wednesday morning.  He'd been shot multiple times.  Diop's official name, according to police, is Mamadou Diop but friends and co-workers tell us they called him "Moustafa." 

Whatever people called him, he was a husband, a father and a veteran cab driver.  Last night his life and career ended when someone shot him in the head. 

In the gray light of day, the murder scene wasn't giving up any information.  The house, in front of which Mamadou Diop's cab was found is empty and abandoned.  Tuesday night after a passerby called to report what appeared to be a murder, emergency crews responded and found Diop behind the wheel of the Ran's Cab he had been leasing for the last four months. 

He'd been shot multiple times in the head.  The head of the community council says her residents are still recovering from an unsolved homicide last year. 

Pamela J. Adams said, "Where this happened up on Baltimore, I have seniors that live up there and I don't like my seniors to be thinking they're trapped in the house again, that they can't come out, because of this shooting.  I'm quite sure because my phone been ringing off the hook since before you called me." 

The owner of Ran's Cab Company tells us that the last time dispatch heard anything from their driver, he'd been sent to pick up a fare on Betton Street in the West End. 

The owner says dispatchers had no idea Diop had driven to the address on Baltimore.  According to city records, originally from Senegal, Diop had been driving cabs in Cincinnati for 12 years and worked for a number of different companies. 

Another cab driver, Elbeciar Mouloud, says the slain cabbie was his best friend. 

"He's a good guy.  He's got a family and his wife, 3 kids here.  His oldest one I think is 7-years-old, then four-years-old and I think 6-years-old.  And his wife she just come from Senegal you know," he tells us. 

Pamela Adams says she worries about outsiders bringing their violence in to her community, "He's a family man.  What did he do to somebody so wrong that you want to shoot him like this?  You could have robbed him, take his money and just let him alone but why shoot him multiple times? That doesn't make any sense to me." 

It is customary for cab drivers to call dispatch and let them know when they've picked up a fare and where they're headed.  We're told Diop did not do that last night when he was sent to Betton Street. 

If you have any information that can lead police to the cabbie's killer, call Crime Stoppers at 352-3040.

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