Slain Roseville Cabdriver Had Only Been Driving For One Week

Roseville cabdriver William Harper, shot dead in his car Thursday evening, had just returned to cabdriving a week earlier after years of driving limousines, his brother Bob Harper said.

“He just basically got that cab,” Bob Harper said. “I don’t know why he went back to cab driving.”

The 56-year-old Fernwood Street resident was killed at about 10 p.m. on March 15 in North Minneapolis.

Harper’s brother, Bob, described him as “a very good-hearted person.”

“He used to haul blind people and disabled people around and help them grocery shop and stuff like that—he felt that was a very rewarding thing to do,” Bob Harper said. “People would ask him for spare change on the street, and he’d always give it to them.”

Harper was born in St. Paul and lived alone in Roseville. His brother said he lived an “active life.”

“He was an avid football fan and a pro-hockey fan,” his brother said. “He attended many hockey and Twins baseball games, and he’d go out to the Guthrie.”

His brother said no memorial service is planned since the Minneapolis Police have yet to return the body.

“He was really close to me, and I’m seven years older than him and have health problems, and he helped me out a lot,” his brother said. “His dog, which was the same kind of dog that was in the Wizard of Oz, a cairn terrier, really misses him.”

The Star Tribune has reported that 11 Twin Cities cabdrivers have been killed on the job since 1990, most recently in 2009 when a 41-year-old driver was stabbed with a screwdriver while sleeping in his parked car.