Pepper-spray spritzing teens wanted for robbing taxis, livery cabs
A crew of teenage thieves armed with pepper spray have turned robbing city taxi and livery drivers into a cottage industry — and are responsible for about 20 heists across the five boroughs, taxi advocates said Thursday.
At least one of the young suspects who have been robbing cabbies since January was arrested, but then released from court without bail, angering taxi advocates, who are demanding prosecutors take a stronger stance against these teen terrors.
'They're targeting yellows, they're targeting liveries, they're targeting whatever they can get,' New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers spokesman Fernando Mateo said at a press conference in the Bronx Thursday. 'Why do they continue to do it? Because the judges are letting them go, because the district attorney sometimes doesn't demand bail, because no one has physically been injured other than being pepper sprayed.'
Since Jan. 21, the cab-robbing crew, consisting of girls and one boy, all between 17 and 19 years old, have committed at least 19 robberies against taxi and livery drivers, police said.
Typically, at least one member of the team hails a ride. Then, once they get inside, they say they have to pick up a friend, cops said. Once the friend is picked up, they pepper spray the cab driver and make off with the hack's cash, cellphone and wallet, cops said.
The robberies have taken place in Midtown, Harlem and Queens, Federation members and police said. The most violent surge occurred between April 25 and May 4, when the teens committed seven pepper-spray robberies against cabbies in just three days, they said.
Livery driver Juan Grullon, 32, was one of the crew's victims. He picked up the thieves in his Tesla in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx and was asked to drop them off on the Upper East Side at Madison Ave. and E. 77th St., he recounted.
But, just before the drop-off, they suddenly changed their destination.
'They told me, like, 'Oh, take this left here,'' he recalled. 'I feel like, 'Oh, this is a little bit weird.''
Right after the suspects had feigned to decide who was going to pay Grullon, one of them stepped out of the cab, opened the driver's door and doused him with pepper spray.
'He pepper sprayed all the way in my hair and everything, my clothes and everything,' Grullon recalled. '[It was] like itchy, and everywhere. I have asthma, too. So it was very difficult to breathe. My eyes were burning.'
With Grullon disoriented, the car accelerated ahead. All the while, the brazen thieves rifled through his glove box and pockets, looking for valuables.
'I moved the car, like, a little bit. I was scared to hit the cars because my eyes [were] closed. I could hit somebody or something,' he remembered worrying. 'They take my wallet and everything, and I accelerate again. And they get out [of] the car and run away with all my stuff.'
The teens then used Grullon's credit cards to buy tacos and pizza and on a quick shopping trip to Duane Reade, the victim was told.
'It's so scary,' he said. 'I'm scared now even to work. You don't know if they have a knife or something. You don't know, because you are with your eyes closed, so you don't know what's happening around you. You just now feel somebody touching you and reaching [into] your pocket.'
The kids who robbed Grullon were possibly LGBTQ and seemed to be 'just very nice people,' until they pounced, Mateo said.
'Once they're in there, they become criminals,' he said.
There may well be even more cab drivers who have been targeted as part of the larger pattern.
'These kids did it to over 20 drivers that were reported,' Mateo said. 'I'm sure that they probably did it to many more that didn't report it because they don't want to waste any time off the road.'
At least one of the suspects believed involved has been arrested twice for these robberies and was released without bail, probably due to being a teenager, Mateo said.
'We're asking our legislators, 'Guys, if you see that these people, whether they're kids or not, if they're committing adult crimes, you've got to punish them accordingly,'' he said.
Anyone with information about this robbery crew is asked to contact NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
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The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, also names Zheng's son and daughter-in-law, saying they owned the Tesla and were 'well aware of Jia Lin Zheng's tendency to drive dangerously, and at a high rate of speed, without any regard for traffic signals.' Zheng's history of traffic incidents in his home state of Hawaii include five citations for speeding, records show. Other infractions included allegedly running a red light and disobeying a traffic control sign. 'This gentleman is clearly ignoring the rules of the road and endangering people,' Dubrovsky said in an interview. That the car was a Tesla may or may not factor into the criminal investigation and lawsuit, as drivers who blame their cars for their crashes are often treated skeptically. In San Francisco, an 80-year-old woman is facing both a wrongful death lawsuit and criminal charges of felony vehicular manslaughter following a West Portal crash in March 2024 that killed a family of four, including two young children. Mary Fong Lau allegedly drove her Mercedes sport utility vehicle at high speed into an oncoming lane of traffic and then slammed into a transit shelter. Police said investigators who looked at 'every aspect' of the case couldn't find evidence that the car malfunctioned. Long-running dispute But Lau wasn't driving a Tesla. Beginning in the 2010s, high-profile allegations of sudden unintended accelerations in the company's vehicles began cropping up around the country, often covered by local news stations when the cars rammed into nail salons, gas stations and garages. Following a 2019 petition to investigate the matter and issue a recall, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigations reviewed 246 complaints made to the agency of sudden unintended acceleration — sometimes abbreviated as SUA — filed for Tesla models 3, S and X since 2013, 203 of which involved crashes. Tesla called the petition 'completely false,' stressing that the person who filed it was a short-seller of the company's stock. 'We investigate every single incident where the driver alleges to us that their vehicle accelerated contrary to their input, and in every case where we had the vehicle's data, we confirmed that the car operated as designed,' the company said in a 2020 blog. 'In other words, the car accelerates if, and only if, the driver told it to do so, and it slows or stops when the driver applies the brake.' Federal officials largely echoed this sentiment a year later after completing their review, maintaining that drivers were to blame. 'In every instance in which event data was available for review by ODI (the Office of Defects Investigations), the evidence shows that SUA crashes in the complaints cited by the petitioner have been caused by pedal misapplication,' the agency wrote in 2021. In many of the incidents reviewed by NHTSA, the car recorded that accelerators were depressed at or near 100%. Some Tesla owners and their lawyers, though, assert that a car's record of a depressed accelerator doesn't necessarily mean it was pushed down by the driver. 'Tesla takes the position that when the data shows 100% acceleration, that must mean the driver was pushing on the acceleration pedal with 100% force,' said attorney Todd Walburg, who represented family members of a Tesla driver who was killed four years ago in Ohio in what they alleged to be a crash caused by sudden unintended acceleration. 'In our view, when the 100% acceleration occurs in a situation that it just doesn't make sense,' Walburg said, 'it's more likely than not evidence of a malfunction.' In some cases, those who allege sudden unintended acceleration in Teslas contact the company directly. Tesla's response often comes as a phone call along with a letter, altered case by case to describe the specific amount of force the company says was used by the driver, according to documents posted on NHTSA's website. 'Based on this review, Tesla determined that the vehicle operated without fault and that the accelerator pedal was manually pressed by the driver immediately prior to the incident,' one letter stated. Some drivers remain unconvinced. 'Does not make logical sense that the car could accelerate 87% in a matter of 2 feet!' one Model S driver wrote in her complaint to NHTSA. 'I am 150% sure I did not hit the accelerator. I am (not someone) who may have pedal confusion.' Another: 'I contacted Tesla and was told I step on the gas 100% in under 2 second[s], and they would not claim responsibility. As I tell them I am 100% sure I did not step on anything 100% (gas or brake) when I am in a busy parking lot. They still denied and said it was my fault.' Mystery settlement Last month, as San Francisco authorities continued investigating the Sixth Street crash, Tesla attorneys signed off on what experts said may be the company's first settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit claiming sudden unintended acceleration in one of its vehicles, according to court records. While the terms of the settlement are unknown, as is whether the company accepted fault, some observers interpreted the agreement as a concession by Tesla, citing CEO Elon Musk's 2022 statement on the platform now known as X that the carmaker would 'never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose.' The suit stemmed from a fatal 2021 crash in Jeffersonville, Ohio. After passing through an intersection, Clyde Leach's Tesla Model Y hopped a curb and slammed into a gas station pillar, igniting a fire. Leach's estate alleged that the crash was due to sudden unintended acceleration, and that Tesla knew about the problem and failed to warn its customers. Tesla's attorneys maintained that Leach floored the car's accelerator. The settlement ended months of litigation over whether Tesla should be forced to turn over documents the company deemed confidential. Walburg, who represented Leach's estate, said he could not comment on the settlement or even its existence. And while Tesla has settled few cases in court, it remains unclear how claims of sudden unintended acceleration have fared in private arbitration that the company uses by contract in many disputes with customers. In the past, other car companies have acknowledged problems with sudden unintended acceleration, but these cases have generally involved physical flaws with pedals and floor mats that prompt a pedal to stay depressed. Andrew McDevitt, a San Francisco attorney who has filed lawsuits against Tesla, said it's possible that some alleged incidents of sudden unintended acceleration were caused by a mix of design flaws and user error. An uninitiated Tesla driver, he said, may accidentally activate some of the car's driver-assist features, such as cruise control. The bigger mystery, McDevitt asserted, surrounds the incidents that drivers believe are caused by an electrical malfunction, even as Tesla and the government see human error. 'The (question) most people are focused on is what would be the electrical explanation, where it truly is spontaneous,' McDevitt said. 'You didn't accidentally push the wrong lever, you didn't accidentally push the pedal, but the car took off.' Claims persist In the years following NHTSA's January 2021 report clearing Tesla of defects, at least 270 other complaints have been filed with the regulatory agency alleging that the company's vehicles accelerated without a driver's input, according to a Chronicle review of materials on the department's website. Many of the claims involved accidents; at least two resulted in a fatality. The information provided in the reports is often limited, though a few patterns emerge. Most of the complainants, for instance, said the events occurred while the cars were moving slowly, such as in parking lots or while pulling into garages. Others, however, made claims similar to those in the San Francisco case, saying they lost control while on the highway and that the brake pedal seemed to make the car go faster. Complaining parties include drivers who said they were using driver-assist modes including Autopilot, which steers the vehicle and controls its speed, as well as those who weren't. One San Jose woman said that while she was driving at about 65 mph, with Autopilot engaged, she pushed the brake pedal only to have the vehicle speed up, while the steering wheel became difficult to turn. After steering left to avoid a rear-end crash, she said, 'the vehicle's front end had crashed into the divider wall and the vehicle ricocheted across four lanes of traffic and ran off the roadway.' The woman was hospitalized with fractures to her spine and ribs. Two years ago, NHTSA agreed to take a second look at the sudden unintended acceleration allegations in Teslas, following a petition by a retired Minnesota engineer who independently reviewed the vehicles' design details. The engineer, Ronald Belt, said in his petition that the details had previously been difficult to obtain but had been posted on open-source networks. In his petition, Belt contended that some or all of the sudden unintended acceleration events may have been caused by high-voltage electrical demands on the car's battery. Further, he said, false accelerator signals may be sent to the vehicle's event data recorder, 'causing Tesla and NHTSA to conclude that the driver caused the sudden increase in torque by stepping on the accelerator pedal.' Belt, who has published research papers on auto safety, said he became interested in the phenomenon following the incidents involving Toyota cars. 'I was saddened to see how drivers were ridiculed by saying that they were the cause of the sudden acceleration by stepping on the accelerator pedal, when my engineering background in electronics told me that the vehicle electronics could have caused the sudden acceleration,' Belt said in an email to the Chronicle. Though NHTSA accepted Belt's petition in June 2023, its website still lists an 'open investigation.' A spokesperson said the agency had no updates on the case's status, but that it conducts a 'technical analysis' on all such petitions. If a petition is granted, the government opens a recall investigation. Aside from a form letter he received from the agency acknowledging his petition, Belt said NHTSA has not communicated with him. He's unaware of whether Tesla has responded to his concerns.
