{"id":347742,"date":"2026-09-15T22:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/347742\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T22:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:06:10","slug":"family-friends-of-nyc-taxi-driver-found-dead-last-week-mourn-and-vow-action-at-west-village-vigil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/347742\/","title":{"rendered":"Family, friends of NYC taxi driver found dead last week mourn, and vow action, at West Village vigil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Family members and friends of Jagjit Singh, an NYC taxi driver who died last week<\/a>, gathered on Tuesday at the West Village corner where he was found unresponsive to bid him a tearful goodbye.<\/p>\n

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the cabbies\u2019 union that first announced Singh\u2019s death on Monday, led the Sept. 15 vigil with Singh\u2019s wife, Sarabjit Kaur, and their two 10-year-old sons in attendance. Several of Singh\u2019s cabbie friends and city Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Midori Valdivia also counted themselves among the mourners.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There they found him unconscious and called 911. Emergency services personnel pronounced him dead at the scene, according to the NYPD.\n<\/p>\n

Bhairavi Desai, the union\u2019s executive director, said Singh \u201cgave so much to keep so many people safe on these city streets.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt breaks our heart that in a car where he\u2019s supposed to work, he also took his last breath,\u201d she added.
\n\"sonsThe New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the cabbies\u2019 union that first announced Singh\u2019s death on Monday, led the Sept. 15 vigil with Singh\u2019s wife, Sarabjit Kaur, and their two 10-year-old sons in attendance. Several of Singh\u2019s cabbie friends and city Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Midori Valdivia also counted themselves among the mourners.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Erum Hanif, CEO and board member of the Apna Brooklyn Community Center, who is also a close friend of Singh\u2019s 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\u2019s to be able to access public resources when they lose their primary earner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t know who\u2019s gonna pay the next month\u2019s mortgage,\u201d she said. \u201cThey don\u2019t know who\u2019s gonna pay the lease of the van or the car the father used to run. They don\u2019t know how to claim all these benefits\u2026I think it\u2019s our collective responsibility to connect some dots and change certain things in the current system to make it more accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

After concluding their remarks, those in attendance laid flowers at a street pole on the corner adorned with a photo of Singh.
\n\"\"Erum Hanif, CEO and board member of the Apna Brooklyn Community Center, who is also a close friend of Singh\u2019s 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\u2019s to be able to access public resources when they lose their primary earner.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell\n<\/p>\n

Singh is the third taxi driver to die in their cab over the summer.<\/p>\n

The other two drivers who died, Gustave Bertrand Adjeli Yao \u2014 known in Harlem as Richard Coulibaly \u2014 and Khalifa Siva \u2014 were found in their cabs last month and in July, respectively. Both died from natural causes.<\/p>\n

Desai attributed the high concentration of such driver deaths in recent months to the increasingly \u201cstressful conditions\u201d that they are working under. She said the deaths highlight the need for real \u201csystemic change\u201d to reduce the stress drivers are feeling on the job by giving them more time to decompress during the workday.<\/p>\n

Desai added that drivers and their families should also be provided with industry-sponsored benefits and services available.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we mourn; tomorrow we organize,\u201d Desai said. \u201cWe organize for these changes, so that our brother\u2019s death is not in vain, and that their memories will live on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valdivia said she understands that there is \u201cmuch more to do\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that you know the mayor talks about an affordability crisis,\u201d she said. \u201cA different part of the\u00a0the affordability crisis is how it impacts our drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Family members and friends of Jagjit Singh, an NYC taxi driver who died last week, gathered on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32701,130092,130093,45758,9,56,129796,63,65,64,114845,46121],"class_list":["post-347742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bhairavi-desai","tag-cab-driver-death","tag-jagjit-singh","tag-midori-valdivia","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-ny-taxi-workers-alliance","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-nyc-taxi-and-limousine-commission","tag-tlc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}