The weeping widow of a Bronx Uber driver fatally stabbed on the job Saturday night recalled their final phone conversation — which she believes was interrupted by the killer getting into her husband’s for-hire vehicle.
Latifatou Alimi told The Post Sunday that before he left for work, her 27-year-old husband, Ganiou Gandonou, lamented, “I’m tired, but I have to go and make money.”
The couple then talked again by phone shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, but the call was cut short when Gandonou picked up a fare, she said.
“He said, ‘I’ll call you back. I have a customer,’ ” said Alimi, 24.
He never called back.
At 9:08 p.m., cops checking out a reported assault found Gandonou’s Toyota Camry sitting along the Hutchinson River Parkway East near Einstein Loop North in Baychester.
Inside, Gandonou was bleeding from stab wounds to his neck and chest. He died a short time later at Jacobi Medical Center.
Investigators have yet to publicly identify a suspect or motive, but police sources said it may have been a robbery gone wrong.
Gandonou drove for a number of companies, including Uber, according to Alimi, but she didn’t know for which he was taking rides at the time.
Uber called the slaying “a horribly tragic incident,” but would not say whether the driver was working for them when he was killed.
While first responders fought to save Gandonou’s life, his wife waited at home with their 2-year-old son, falling asleep on the couch, not knowing that they had already spoken for the last time.
“I woke up at 2 a.m. and he wasn’t home. So I started calling him. He didn’t pick up,” an inconsolable Alimi said. “I texted him, I said, ‘Babe, are you OK?’
“No reply.”
Latifatou Alimi told The Post Sunday that before he left for work, her 27-year-old husband, Ganiou Gandonou, lamented, “I’m tired, but I have to go and make money.”
The couple then talked again by phone shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday, but the call was cut short when Gandonou picked up a fare, she said.
“He said, ‘I’ll call you back. I have a customer,’ ” said Alimi, 24.
He never called back.
At 9:08 p.m., cops checking out a reported assault found Gandonou’s Toyota Camry sitting along the Hutchinson River Parkway East near Einstein Loop North in Baychester.
Inside, Gandonou was bleeding from stab wounds to his neck and chest. He died a short time later at Jacobi Medical Center.
Investigators have yet to publicly identify a suspect or motive, but police sources said it may have been a robbery gone wrong.
Gandonou drove for a number of companies, including Uber, according to Alimi, but she didn’t know for which he was taking rides at the time.
Uber called the slaying “a horribly tragic incident,” but would not say whether the driver was working for them when he was killed.
While first responders fought to save Gandonou’s life, his wife waited at home with their 2-year-old son, falling asleep on the couch, not knowing that they had already spoken for the last time.
“I woke up at 2 a.m. and he wasn’t home. So I started calling him. He didn’t pick up,” an inconsolable Alimi said. “I texted him, I said, ‘Babe, are you OK?’
“No reply.”
When a knock finally came at their door, Alimi thought her husband had lost his keys. “It was his friend. He said, ‘Ganiou is dead.’ I just began to cry,” she said.
“My husband was a very quiet man, a very hard-working man,” said Alimi, remembering how their toddler son would run to the door to greet “Daddy” when he came home from a shift. “He always said, ‘I’m working hard for my son so he doesn’t have to.’ ”
At a Sunday press conference , the state Federation of Taxi Drivers announced a $3,000 reward for information on the slaying. Alimi hopes the killer surrenders.
“I want to look that person in his face. I want to know the reason why he [did] it, because I know for sure he doesn’t got any reason,” she said. “He took the wrong person.”
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Crime