Teen Charged In Cabbie's Death

MOUNT VERNON - An 18-year-old Mount Vernon man charged with murdering a taxi driver had been planning to rob a cabbie for a week, prosecutors say.

Daniel Moody Turner told friends he would call the cab, hit the driver on the head and take the money, according to charging papers. He asked his friends to help but they declined, the papers say.

Turner was charged Wednesday in Skagit County Superior Court with first-degree murder in the death of Cecil Hill of Mount Vernon.

Hill, 25, an employee of A Cab Taxi Service, went to pick up a fare at a pay phone outside LaVenture Middle School about midnight last Thursday. When he got there, someone smashed his head with a rock. Hill's cab slammed into the school gymnasium wall and caught fire. He died at a Bellingham hospital.