Trapped in the back of a speeding taxi with the driver fleeing from police, Katelyn Patterson began to cry.
“He’s not even stopping for the cops. Oh my God. Please help. Please help,” a weeping Patterson can be heard on her recorded call to police.
Patterson, 24, of Norwood and her 25-year-old friend, Joseph Genovese, were picked up by a cab as the two left the Liquor Store club just after 1 a.m. Saturday.
They asked to go to a Billings Street in Quincy to visit a friend, police said, but when driver Osei Kwame headed toward Billings Road instead, Genovese began to argue and asked to be let out of the cab.
When he got out of the cab to pay, Patterson began to take off her seat belt, but that’s when authorities said Kwame took off.
What followed was a more than 6-minute nightmarish cab ride in which Kwame ran red lights, weaved in and out of traffic and initially failed to stop for police, authorities said.
“Let me out of this taxi,” Patterson yelled while on the phone with police.
Kwame, 51, of Waltham, eventually stopped near an on-ramp to Interstate 93.
Standing on the porch of her Norwood home yesterday, Patterson said she did not want to speak about the incident and that she was still shaken up and probably would be for a while.
Kwame told reporters after his arraignment that the couple refused to pay their fare and that the doors locked themselves.
