Friday, Oct. 26, 2001 It's A Shit Job Here's another news story I got in my inbox...... CORINTH - The body of a Bangor taxi driver who had been missing for 24 hours was discovered inside a cab Sunday afternoon in a field behind an abandoned farmhouse off Route 43. The driver was identified as Donna Leen, 61, a veteran cab driver who last was dispatched around noon on Saturday to pick up a passenger at a construction site in Bangor. She was last heard from half an hour later when she called a dispatcher at her employer, Dick's Taxi, to say she would be a bit longer than expected. Maine State Police called the death suspicious, but on Sunday night had not ruled out any cause. Some people riding all-terrain vehicles discovered the cab, with the body inside, early Sunday afternoon. The ATV riders' identities weren't disclosed. State police, Bangor police detectives and members of the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department converged on the rural site after the discovery. By 7:40 p.m. Sunday the cab with Leen's body inside had been loaded onto a flatbed truck bound for the state police crime lab in Augusta. Maine State Police Detective Lt. Derrell Ouellette said an autopsy would be conducted, possibly as soon as today. State troopers and Penobscot County detectives were planning to remain at the site overnight. The field is behind a farmhouse that a neighbor said is owned by a man who lives out of state. "At this point, we don't know what the cause of death is," Ouellette said Sunday night. "The death is unexplained, and we're going to rely on the Medical Examiner's Office to provide us with the manner and cause of death. "We're trying to retrace her steps from [Saturday] as far as the calls she took while driving the cab. We're also interviewing neighbors in the area," Ouellette said. Katie Talbot, who lives within a quarter mile of the farm, said her dogs barked incessantly between 9:30 and 10 p.m. Saturday. "It was not their usual bark. I knew something was amiss," Talbot said. Earlier Sunday, Leen's daughter, Michelle Booker, appeared on local television seeking her mother's whereabouts. Her mother had driven taxis for 20 years and repeatedly called in her locations, Booker said. By 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Booker and her husband appeared at the cordoned-off crime scene in Corinth. Booker spoke for a few minutes with law enforcement authorities, then returned to a van, accompanied by her husband, without comment. Leen hadn't been identified at that point. Hours later, Ouellette said Leen's family members were formally notified of her death. A slender woman, Leen was described in a missing-person bulletin as being 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 115 pounds. She wore hearing aids in each ear and wore trifocals. Leen's last ride apparently occurred when she picked up a fare at a construction site on Stillwater Avenue with a passenger of passengers bound for Pushaw Lake area on outer Essex Street, according to Jack Cummings, a dispatcher at Dick's Taxi. A man requested the cab by telephone from the state Department of Transportation construction site for the new Interstate 95 interchange, according to the second dispatcher. On Sunday evening, detectives from the Maine State Police and Bangor Police Department searched the small red and white trailer on the site while an officer secured the scene just off Stillwater Avenue. Although the nature of Leen's death had not been determined Sunday afternoon, Ralph Spencer, another dispatcher, feared the longtime driver had met with foul play. "It's a bad day for the taxi business," said Spencer, who also worked at Dick's Taxi, where Leen had worked for six years. Spencer, who has known Leen for 15 years, described her as "very personable and very nice but [she] could be rough at times." "People need to know that what we do is dangerous. This is a small city compared to most, but things like this do happen," Spencer said. A taxi driver is 60 times more likely to be murdered in the course of his/her job than in any other civillian profession. Remember that next time you want to give any of us grief.
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