DC Councilwoman: Taxi Kinda Kidnapped My Daughter

It's always annoying when a cab won't take your credit card, and it's even more annoying when that leads to them locking you in the cab and driving off. That's what allegedly happened to the daughter of DC council member Mary Cheh, the lawmaker said during a hearing yesterday. The council was looking at allegations that some cabs are flouting rules requiring them to have operable credit card machines, the Washington Post explains. Cheh's daughter, a 26-year-old lawyer, found herself in one such cab, and threatened to report it.

At that point the driver locked the doors, drove her "many blocks away," and called police to say he had a customer refusing to pay. "It was really egregious," Cheh said, adding that it "actually meets the definition of kidnapping," and could be a felony. Police at the time didn't take action against either party, but at the hearing, DC's taxi commissioner said the driver might now lose his license over it, WUSA 9 reports. He added that Cheh wasn't alone, and that they'd had "several instances of that locking-the-door business." (More taxi stories.)