a heavy heart

On Thursday night, less than 15 blocks from our apartment, a DEA agent was murdered in what looks like a taxi robbery gone bad.  The agent was assigned to Cartagena but was in Bogota and had gone to watch the NBA finals with other embassy folks at a local restaurant in a very popular, trendy area.  After the game ended, he hopped in a taxi off the street and apparently was promptly made part of a "paseo millionario" scheme.  What happens in these paseos is that a taxi driver picks you up - usually late at night between 11pm and midnight - and other people jump in the car with you several blocks down the street.  They force you to use your ATM card to get out the max before midnight and then again after midnight and then they let you go.  According to early news reports last week, the taxi the agent was riding in was intercepted by another taxi about three blocks from the restaurant.  Two men got out and tried to pull the agent out of the car, stabbing him three times in the chest and once in the leg.  They left him on the sidewalk where passersby found him and took him to the nearest hospital, where he was pronounced dead.   

Terry Watson was 42 years old and married just a few short months to a Colombian woman he met in Cartagena, and very early this morning with an entourage of his embassy and law enforcement counterparts, his body was loaded on an airplane in a very moving ramp ceremony to go back to his family in Louisiana.

The area where this happened, Parque 93, is a super-trendy area of Bogota and thankfully for this reason, there are security cameras everywhere.  The Colombian police and the embassy security folks are working through the videos and witnesses to find these thugs.  And when they do, I hope they'll be punished appropriately.

With now less than a week to go before we leave Bogota, this was a real wake-up call for me.  I don't ever take taxis late at night, but I have hailed taxis off the street during the day.  The method we're supposed to use is to call a reputable taxi company who will send out a taxi to you with a specific plate number.  This method is great when it works, but there are many occasions during rush-hour traffic, rainstorms, etc when it is impossible to even get past the busy signal when you call.  Thus, the hailing of taxis on the street.  I have been scared straight out of my complacency on hailing on the street.

Please keep Terry Watson's family and wife in your thoughts and prayers as they struggle with their loss.