Ajla Zekan St Louis woman stabs Pakistan cabbie, Inam Allah Khattak 11 times in unprovoked attack. History of prior arrests and mishaps.
A St. Louis woman has been arrested for repeatedly stabbing a taxi driver during an unprovoked attack in Missouri, authorities said.
Ajla Zekan, 21, was taken into custody Saturday for the late Tuesday attack on a cab driver whom she stabbed ‘without notice’ about 11 times with a knife roughly 4 to 6 inches long, according to a probable cause statement cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Zekan stabbed the victim, Inam Allah Khattak, as she was seated in the back of the cab, leaving wounds to the man’s face, hand, chest, shoulder and lower torso, cops said.
But there’s more.
As the 47 year old victim fled his cab to get help, Zekan hopped into the driver’s seat and drove off. The vehicle was found abandoned about 10 miles away later that day.
Zekan — who cops say is homeless — was arrested Saturday during a traffic stop in St. Louis County. She faces charges of first-degree assault, armed criminal action and first-degree tampering with a motor vehicle.
Khattak, who was hospitalized following the attack, told KMOV that Zekan stabbed him without warning.
‘I’m feeling that I’m glad to be alive,’ the 47-year-old victim told the station.
‘She told me, ‘I want to kill you….”
Khattak, better known as ‘Sunny’, said he picked Zekan up in Imperial before being asked to go to a nearby convenience store for cigarettes. But the woman’s debit card was rejected, prompting her to tell Khattak to head to a garage where her father would ultimately pay her fare, KMOV reports.
‘I told her, ‘You pay me $30, right?’ She told me I will pay your $35,’ the cabbie recalled from his hospital bed. ‘You take me to [my] home and my father will pay you money.’
It was at this point Zekan allegedly started stabbing the cabbie.
‘She told me, ‘I want to you kill you,’’ Khattak reiterated.
After the unprovoked attack, Khattak, who works for United Cab and was covering for another employee that evening, ran for help at a nearby home, where a man called 911, he said.
‘Yes, I will be nervous,’ Khattak said of the prospect of returning to work.
Khattak, a native of Pakistan, has been driving a cab for nearly 14 years, according to an online fundraiser set up to help offset his medical costs.
It remained unclear what led to Zekan to repeatedly stabbing the immigrant and whether the assault was predicated on him being a ‘foreigner’ as some commentators wondered.
A regard of the woman’s Facebook wall revealed what appeared to be previous runs in with the law and previous episodes which had left her ‘traumatized.’ Images on the wall indicated Ajla Zekan being a young mother to a boy. It remained unclear who retained custody of the child and the length of time she has been homeless.
Following her arrest, Zekann was held by St. Louis County but was expected to be transferred to the Jefferson County Jail. Her bond is $500,000.
