Coquitlam taxi driver locks autistic child inside car over payment confusion, mother furious

COQUILTAM (NEWS 1130) – The mother of an autistic child in Coquitlam is furious after a taxi driver locked her child inside the cab over confusion about how he was going to be paid.

Loni Stepan says it’s how her son gets to and from school every day – she has a prepaid account with Bel-Air Taxi. But the driver who picked up her son Monday didn’t know his trip had already been paid for, so when he got in the taxi he demanded he pay up.

The 11-year-old boy was confused and angry. He yelled at the driver to take him home. The driver turned around and went back to the school, locking the child inside while he confirmed whether or not the trip was paid for. Stepan says her son felt trapped and banged on the doors trying frantically to get out.

“I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t impressed,” said the boy, whose name is being withheld at his mother’s request. “Scared feelings were being blotted out by angry feelings […] I did kind of feel trapped and angry. I couldn’t get out.”

Stepan says she’s thankful her son was feeling more angry than afraid at the time, but she could see that the ordeal took a toll on him.

“He was definitely overwhelmed. It was way too much for him to process. It took quite a bit longer to get them to sleep that night, just from over activation of the fight-or-flight response,” she says.

While she is sympathetic to the driver who wanted to make sure he was getting paid, she says how the situation was handled was “completely unacceptable and completely inappropriate.”

“Drivers, they don’t know who’s getting in their taxi, right? They don’t know if they’re dealing with somebody who is whatever people would consider normal, or if this person has mental health issues, or if this person has learning disabilities or processing [issues],” she says.

“A normal person would find that traumatic, would feel trapped and have anxiety and be scared – all of those things. And when you add into that some kind of neurological disorder or disability or mental illness, it complicates things 100-fold, and it can do severe damage to their ability to make connections and just be able to cope in regular society.”

Bel-Air Taxi has confirmed these events and issued an apology, saying it was a case of miscommunication.

Manager Harry Dhaliwal says when the school called for the taxi, it didn’t note the trip was pre-paid, so they sent a regular driver who isn’t authorized to take charter trips. The driver called dispatch to find out if the student was chartered, but was again told the trip was not.

“He then asked the student if he was paying he said no. At this point he was returning the child to the school to get confirmation. While waiting at the school the driver received confirmation that the trip was covered and at this point he took the child home and watched him enter the residence before leaving. The doors were locked the entire time for the student’s safety as he was quite upset and yelling at the driver,” Dhaliwal says in an email.

He says the child has been using the company’s charter service since September without any incidents.

“I believe our General Manager has been in conversation with Loni and he has apologized. This was a case of miss communication [sic] and we are sorry for any trouble this may have caused,” Dhaliwal writes.

Stepan says she’s asked staff at her son’s school to escort her child to the taxi for any future trips to make sure this kind of scenario doesn’t happen again.