Every week in the past, Noureddine Bitat watched helplessly on West thirty sixth Road as rowdies trashed his yellow taxi following a Knicks win — and nervous about how he would maintain making a dwelling.
“The crowd was really wild,” he mentioned in Arabic via a translator. “I was scared.”
On Wednesday, the daddy of three sat in entrance of a row of tv cameras in Queens to thank those that have come to his help within the wake of a scare that has, for now, pushed him out of a job he has held for greater than two years.
“This has made me feel like I have another family here,” mentioned Bitat, whose spouse and youngsters dwell in Algeria.
The 59-year-old Queens cabbie turned a reluctant image of the outbursts that adopted the Knicks’ 29-point comeback in Sport 4 of the NBA Finals, when crowds swarmed his leased 2026 Toyota Sienna, shattering the car’s windshield, destroying its meter and stomping on its roof.
“I couldn’t imagine that this could happen to me,” he mentioned. “Especially in a country where I feel like I’m home.”
The NYPD this week introduced {that a} 21-year-old Florida man has been charged with prison mischief for allegedly damaging the taxi.
Bitat singled out The Metropolis Reporter for a narrative that detailed how he was punched within the head whereas being dragged out of the taxi at thirty sixth Road and Seventh Avenue — and for later serving to to attach the New York Taxi Staff Alliance with representatives for hip-hop celebrity French Montana.
Bitat holds up his telephone containing a enterprise card for a journalist from The Metropolis Reporter, June 17, 2026. Ben Fractenberg/The Metropolis Reporter
Born in Morocco and raised in The Bronx, Montana is thought for his charitable work and for bringing on-line consideration to causes he champions.
The Bronx-raised rapper posted a video to X late Sunday of the cabbie standing dejectedly exterior of the taxi, writing “Somebody find him for me so we can help him back on his feet.”
By Tuesday, a GoFundMe account went dwell, established by Montana, the Canadian TikTok influencer Zachery Dereniowski and the New York Taxi Staff Alliance. A day later, the fund was closing in on its $75,000 goal.
“He’s taken notice of the good in the people, especially, I think, in a moment of such darkness and trauma for him,” mentioned Bhairavi Desai, government director of the New York Taxi Staff Alliance.
After being sidelined, Bitat acquired a full week’s pay for final week and for this week from Sign Taxi, the corporate from which he leases the wheelchair-accessible Toyota.
The funds being raised for him by the taxi union and his bold-faced-name supporters are designed to prop him up whereas he figures out what to do subsequent. However getting behind the wheel once more, he repeated Wednesday, is out of the query.
“We want Noureddine to have a different choice, a choice to be able to say, ‘I don’t want to drive anymore from this trauma and I’m going to have enough financial resources to make a different choice,’” Desai mentioned.
The encounter left emotional scars on Bitat, who broke down in tears a number of instances final Friday whereas detailing what occurred to The Metropolis Reporter.
“I’m still traumatized,” he mentioned Wednesday. “But it’s not like the first day.”
The outbursts that adopted the Sport 4 win supplied a preview of the violence that adopted days later when the Knicks completed off the San Antonio Spurs in Sport 5. The title-clinching win Saturday set resulted in a Occasions Sq. capturing, 5 World Cup shuttle buses set on fireplace alongside forty second Road, a dozen MTA buses being vandalized and 62 arrests.
Desai pleaded with New Yorkers and vacationers to remember that the injury comes with a heavy value for staff attempting to maintain the town transferring.
“Help keep our drivers safe,” she mentioned. “They keep you safe and what we ask for in return is that you respect the men and women that do this job.”
Bitat congratulated the Knicks for the staff’s first NBA championship since 1973, whereas including that he hopes the ticker-tape parade Thursday up the Canyon of Heroes in Decrease Manhattan will probably be an uneventful gathering. Mayor Zohran Mamdani mentioned that greater than 10,000 law enforcement officials will probably be assigned to parade responsibility.
“I want people to celebrate in a peaceful way,” he mentioned. “Not in the way that happened [last week] and put my life at risk.”
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