*Note: The driver’s name has been altered for legal reasons.
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In many ways, the job of a taxi driver in Bendigo was a perfect fit for loving mother Linda*.
For a year-and-a-half, she put everything into her night time job. So much so, she became known as “taxi mum” among the Bendigo drivers.
“I used to almost mother some of the younger girls I’d pick up. I used to love taking the shopping in for the older ladies,” Linda said.
“If a teen needed to get home, and they only had $10 for a $15 fare, you’d let it slide.
“Once I took an old lady to the hospital to see her dying husband. There was no way I was going to charge her for that.”
She was outgoing, had plenty of friends among the drivers and her regular customers, and would go to work with a smile.
But the events on July 2 changed her forever. She now suffers agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, does not leave her house without her husband and has a panic attack when she sees a taxi.
It started as a normal night.
Linda picked up a regular passenger in Golden Square and took him to King Street, where she picked up Scott Bury.
“They started to have a disagreement, it was nothing serious, they weren’t even swearing,” she said.
She dropped them off, then an hour later the two waved her down again on Chapel Street.
This time, it was different.
“They were having a huge argument, Bury was hitting the passenger. I was getting caught up in it with the elbows and fists,” Linda said.
“Bury was leaning right over the seat to attack him. I pulled over and told them to calm down. The passenger pushed Bury back into his seat and told him to calm down.
“That’s when I heard a backpack open, I saw Bury pulling out the knife, and he started to swing it.”
The passenger was grabbing Bury’s arm, stopping the butcher’s cleaver from connecting. It came within centimetres of Linda’s head.
The duress alarm was out of reach. Sudden movements would have been obvious.
Bury yelled at her to take him home. When he left the taxi, he threw $10 at her – a tip of 50 cents.
It should have been the end of Linda’s ordeal.
But an hour later, after talking to a taxi driver friend, she decided the best way to forget about it was to have a normal fare. A job popped up, at the other end of King Street, far away from the earlier incident.
Linda pulled up, and suddenly Bury dived into the back seat, without the earlier passenger.
“I turned and said, ‘it’s me’, and he just went nuts,” she said.
Bury told Linda if the passenger came near him, if she told anyone, he would tie her up and make her watch him slice up her children. He repeated the threat twice before running away.
Linda thought it was the last time she would have to deal with the knife-wielding man. But it was only the beginning.
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After the ordeal, Linda broke down into uncontrollable tears. The threat to her children was too much.
She drove to the train station where her colleagues were sure to be waiting for a fare. She spoke with protective service officers, who told her to go to the police.
“I was numb and struggled to get the words out to the policewoman,” Linda said.
He put her in danger by bringing Scott Bury into her taxi, but Linda says without the actions of her passenger, there would have been disastrous consequences.
The passenger – a regular customer for Bendigo taxi drivers – had almost wrestled the knife out of Bury’s hands as he thrashed it frantically.
He intercepted the blows, blocking the swinging knife with his arms.
Linda said it could have ended much differently without his actions.
“I had driven (the passenger) many times since becoming a taxi driver and never had a concern with him,” she said.
“I just want to thank him. If he hadn’t had stopped that knife, I wouldn’t be here.”
She took out an aggravated violence order against Bury on October 12, and was told his next appearance would be November 24.
Linda wouldn’t be needed then because it was just “formalities”, she was told.
She was promised she would eventually have an opportunity to tell her story in court, to make sure justice could be done.
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On Tuesday, 47-year-old Scott Bury stood before magistrate Timothy Bourke in Bendigo.
He was meant to get a date to contest the charge of assault with a weapon. That would give Linda the chance to tell her side of the story.
Instead, Bury asked for a sentencing indication. He was told he would get a 12-month good behaviour bond, with anger management classes. His lack of prior convictions had played in his favour.
Bury accepted, and his court proceedings were over.
For Linda, it was another blow after almost five months of torture.
“It’s not even a slap on the wrist. It’s disgusting,” she said.
“If I was there, I would have had a voice. I would have seen him say ‘guilty’, I would have been able to stand up and say what he had done to me and my family.”
Since the night of July 2, Linda has lost her job, she struggles to sleep, she has a fear of Bendigo, cannot go shopping alone, cannot go to her children’s school and only goes out in public with her husband.
In the last month, she has only been to the shops four times, never alone.
“I used to love shopping. I’d drive my husband mad by just walking around the shops looking at everything,” Linda said.
“But now, I can’t even put the key in the ignition of the car.
“I live in constant fear that he will follow through with his threats.”
Linda wrote a six-page victim impact statement. She wanted it read out in court – at least in part – but instead it was glanced over.
She only worked four more shifts before the very act of leaving the house became too overwhelming. She hasn’t driven a taxi since.
With Christmas approaching, her family is struggling to pay bills, let alone think about presents.
Linda said it wasn’t unusual for taxi drivers to be assaulted, particularly females, but the image of the knife and the threats continued to haunt her.
“Sometimes it’s just that they grab you, other times they get more aggressive,” she said.
Despite the sleepless nights and the anxiety, Linda said the support from her fellow drivers was something she would never forget.
“Bendigo taxi drivers are like a family,” she said.