Family members and friends of Jagjit Singh, an NYC taxi driver who died last week, gathered on Tuesday at the West Village corner where he was found unresponsive to bid him a tearful goodbye.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the cabbies’ union that first announced Singh’s death on Monday, led the Sept. 15 vigil with Singh’s wife, Sarabjit Kaur, and their two 10-year-old sons in attendance. Several of Singh’s cabbie friends and city Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Midori Valdivia also counted themselves among the mourners.
Singh, a 53-year-old who immigrated from India and has driven a cab in the city for over two decades, parked his taxi at the corner of 7th Avenue and Charles Street after dropping off a fare nearby between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11. After several hours of being unable to reach Singh, his friends contacted the broker for his taxi medallion to help trace his vehicle to the West Village corner.
There they found him unconscious and called 911. Emergency services personnel pronounced him dead at the scene, according to the NYPD.
Bhairavi Desai, the union’s executive director, said Singh “gave so much to keep so many people safe on these city streets.”
“It breaks our heart that in a car where he’s supposed to work, he also took his last breath,” she added.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the cabbies’ union that first announced Singh’s death on Monday, led the Sept. 15 vigil with Singh’s wife, Sarabjit Kaur, and their two 10-year-old sons in attendance. Several of Singh’s cabbie friends and city Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Midori Valdivia also counted themselves among the mourners.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
While Singh, who lived with his family on Long Island, was a cab driver for 20 years, he has only owned a medallion along with two friends since 2023, Desai said. On top of driving a taxi, Singh also worked a seasonal construction job.
Erum Hanif, CEO and board member of the Apna Brooklyn Community Center, who is also a close friend of Singh’s family, said that his death leaves his family in a precarious financial situation. She added that it must be made easier for immigrant families like Singh’s to be able to access public resources when they lose their primary earner.
“They don’t know who’s gonna pay the next month’s mortgage,” she said. “They don’t know who’s gonna pay the lease of the van or the car the father used to run. They don’t know how to claim all these benefits…I think it’s our collective responsibility to connect some dots and change certain things in the current system to make it more accessible.”
After concluding their remarks, those in attendance laid flowers at a street pole on the corner adorned with a photo of Singh.
Erum Hanif, CEO and board member of the Apna Brooklyn Community Center, who is also a close friend of Singh’s family, said that his death leaves his family in a precarious financial situation. She added that it must be made easier for immigrant families like Singh’s to be able to access public resources when they lose their primary earner.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Singh is the third taxi driver to die in their cab over the summer.
The other two drivers who died, Gustave Bertrand Adjeli Yao — known in Harlem as Richard Coulibaly — and Khalifa Siva — were found in their cabs last month and in July, respectively. Both died from natural causes.
Desai attributed the high concentration of such driver deaths in recent months to the increasingly “stressful conditions” that they are working under. She said the deaths highlight the need for real “systemic change” to reduce the stress drivers are feeling on the job by giving them more time to decompress during the workday.
Desai added that drivers and their families should also be provided with industry-sponsored benefits and services available.
“Today we mourn; tomorrow we organize,” Desai said. “We organize for these changes, so that our brother’s death is not in vain, and that their memories will live on.”
Valdivia said she understands that there is “much more to do” to address the challenges that drivers are facing. She said that while Mayor Zohran Mamdani often talks about the affordability crisis facing every day New Yorkers, taxi drivers are staring down one of there own.
“I do think that you know the mayor talks about an affordability crisis,” she said. “A different part of the the affordability crisis is how it impacts our drivers.”