Shooting Linked To Rivalry; Cabbie Critically Wounded Downtown

The shooting of a cabdriver on a busy downtown street yesterday may have had its genesis in a bitter rivalry within one of Seattle's largest taxi companies.

Seattle police were still searching for the suspected shooter, a 29-year-old Des Moines man who fled in a cab after firing several shots at a 44-year-old co-worker. Police late last night found the suspect's cab near Garfield High School in the Central Area.

The victim, Jasbir Singh Bassi, was shot at least once in the chest and remained in critical condition this morning at Harborview Medical Center.

Colleagues said the men knew each other and were drivers for Farwest Taxi. Both are also part-owners in the co-op cab organization.

Several drivers at Farwest identified the suspected shooter as chairman of the company's internal grievance committee.

The gunshots erupted at 3:45 p.m. near the Westin Hotel, prompting pedestrians to dive for cover.

According to Seattle police spokeswoman Carmen Best, the victim walked up to the suspected shooter's cab on Westlake Avenue between Stewart Street and Olive Way and banged on his window.

The shooter fired at least one shot at the victim from inside his vehicle, then left his cab and continued firing at the victim, Best said. He then jumped back in his vehicle and fled, turning east on Olive.

Leroy Judkins, 29, was in his car on Fifth Avenue less than a block away when he heard what he thought were two firecrackers. Then he heard yelling, looked and realized the man shouting had been shot.

"It was almost like a chanting yell," Judkins recalled. "He was still standing in shock. I didn't see what started the altercation."

Next, Judkins saw a cab driver fire between four and five additional shots at the victim, who staggered backward. That cab driver and another cab driver jumped into separate cabs and sped away. A third car, a white vehicle, followed them, Judkins said.

Judkins, a former emergency medical technician, did a quick U-turn onto Westlake and ran to administer aid to Bassi, staying with him until medics arrived.

Harinderbir Singh, another Farwest Taxi driver, said he knew the two men but wasn't there when the shooting happened. Bassi, he said, was not on duty when he was shot.

Another group of Farwest drivers hurried down to Westlake Avenue after hearing about the shooting.

Jasbir Randhawa said the suspected shooter and Bassi were in rival camps within the company, which holds annual elections for a board of directors. The suspected shooter had punched another driver earlier in the day, he said.

Bassi had told him that he thought he was being followed, Randhawa added.

"There are two groups," Randhawa said. "Some people don't like each other."

"This is a power struggle," added Dalip Singh, a cab driver at Emerald City Taxi who knows many of the Farwest drivers. "It's been going on a long time. Of course, nobody expected it would go to the extent that it went to today."

Emmett McCormick, dispatch director for Farwest, said he has been with the company for more than 20 years and has never seen anything like what occurred yesterday.

McCormick said since the company is a co-op where about 160 of the 300 to 400 drivers are part-owners, there is a lot of jockeying for power among the owners, who annually elect a board of directors.

"The company is dynamic internally," he said. "It's a company where the individual owners try to impact their business on a day-to-day basis."

But he is baffled by what happened.

McCormick described the suspected shooter as "one of the gentlest, hard-working people I have ever known in my life." He took his job as grievance chairman very seriously, and McCormick sometimes had warned him to be careful.

The suspected shooter had talked to the victim in recent months about complaints about his performance, McCormick said.

"We feel real bad about this. We're just devastated."

Anne Koch's phone message number is 206-464-3303. Her e-mail address is akoch@seattletimes.co.