Taxi driver left drunk passenger to die

STRASBOURG, France, Aug 30 (AFP) – A French taxi driver was convicted and handed a suspended jail sentence Tuesday for the death of a drunk woman passenger he left by a busy road because she did not have enough money to pay her fare.

Philippe Pinto, 31, was given a one-year suspended term and banned from driving taxis for three months by a court in the eastern French city of Strasbourg which found him guilty of manslaughter.

“I didn’t think it would go this far. I thought she’d call someone to pick her up with a mobile or using the emergency phone” in the parking area on the highway where he ordered her out of his cab, Pinto said.

The 43-year-old woman, who was heavily inebriated, was hit by a car as she staggered along the road.

The lawyer representing her family, Francis Metzger, said she suffered a “terrible death, comparable to that of a dog you might find in a ditch in the morning.”

Police traced Pinto to the scene through the victim’s credit card, which she had tried to use to pay her fare but failed because of a technical problem.

Subject: French news, crime, Stasbourg, Philippe Pinto