Muslim Group: Jennings Needs U.S. Prosecution

At a news conference Monday in Queens, the New York taxi driver whose hands were bloodied in a violent cab fare dispute last December said the dropping of charges against a Darien man was "very unfair," according to a Wall Street Journal report.

"When I hear […] this guy is going to run away with it, after all what happened to me, I'm very sad," taxi driver Mohamed Ammar said at a news conference in front of a mosque in Astoria, Queens, according to the newspaper.

Ammar's attorney, Hassan Ahmad, told reporters his client is still weighing whether or not to file a civil lawsuit against William Bryan Jennings. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants the U.S. Attorney's office to bring a hate crimes case against Jennings, according to a report in the Eyewitness News website for WABC-TV in New York.

Ahmad said that several weeks after the late December incident, Ammar discovered the knife just in front of where Jennings had been sitting and under the rear of the cab's front passenger seat, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Police had searched the cab within a week after the incident, but found nothing.

Ammar then waited several weeks more before letting prosecutors know he had found the knife. According to Ahmad, the taxi driver was afraid because his fingerprints were on the blade, according to Reuters.

Jennings had told police that Ammar was cut because he grabbed the blade.

Ammar said he made a "big mistake" by not alerting authorities sooner and giving them the knife.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Ahmad said the assistant state's attorney spoke confidently about the case until abruptly announcing that it would be dropped. 'At no time did he say the knife was a major problem and then all of a sudden it's the whole case,' he said."

"He didn't know what it was; he didn't know whose it was. He picked it up and he realized at that point he's holding the knife that may have been the knife that was used," Ahmad said at the Queens news conference, according to WABC-TV Eyewitness News.

At a brief news conference in front of the Stamford courthouse, Jennings said, "It was a difficult ordeal for my family."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg Businessweek, Jennings is no longer employed by Morgan Stanley.

Editor's note: See also Darien Patch's past coverage of the case:

• Darien Exec Charged with Assaulting Cabbie (March 3)

• Jennings Pleads Not Guilty (March 9)

• Jennings Case: No Charges for Cabbie (March 10)

• Jennings' Lawyer: Police Made False Statements (March 30)

• Charges Dropped Against Jennings in Taxi Case (Oct. 12)

• Attorney: Explanations Monday for Dropping Jennings Charges (Oct. 13)

• Prosecutor: Jennings' Charges Dropped Because Cabbie Withheld Knife  (Oct. 15)