BRIGHTON, Mass — A cab driver injured by an attempted robber armed with a hammer and knife fought off her attacker Wednesday.
Lilt Molla, who owns her own taxi company, arrived to pick up a customer on Jette Court in Brighton shortly before 5 a.m.
But the woman who hopped in her car had no intention of going anywhere.
“She said, ‘I’m going to stab you. I’m going to stab you. Give me the money.’” Molla told Boston 25 News. “And I turned around [and said], ‘I just started. I don’t have any money.’”
Molla had accidentally left the partition between the front and back seats open after driving her daughter in the car earlier. That allowed the woman to reach in and attack.
“She hit me with the hammer,” Molla said. “I don’t know. I got nervous… I [held] her, and I [bit] her, and I turned the knife on her.”
The would-be robber ran away without any cash, and Molla, bleeding heavily, drove straight to the police department to report the crime.
An ambulance rushed her to St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, where she was treated for a laceration to her forehead and released.
Molla, who has never experienced a violent incident in her eight to nine years as a taxi driver, is now recovering at home, grateful to be alive.
Her car, which she crashed during the ordeal, is currently at the shop. But when it’s fixed, the mother of three plans to return to her job to support her family.
“This is what I do for a living,” she said. “What else can I do?”
Boston police are investigating the crime. No arrest had yet been reported Wednesday night.