Before limo driver's fatal shooting, a warning

The warning, sent out by a dispatcher Saturday evening to the 102 drivers of La Primera Car & Limo Service, was clear.

"Peligroso!!! No mande carro."

"Dangerous! Don't send a car."

It appeared on the dashboard of every active La Primera driver - cautioning them not to pick up a group at Seventh and Clearfield Streets who had just been refused service by another driver. Too rowdy, the driver said.

Mijael Rodriguez-Ramirez, just two weeks on the job, didn't notice the warning. He picked up the three men on Clearfield at 6:18.

Within the hour, he was dead.

Alonzo Dilligard, 20, of Darby Borough, was charged Monday with murder. Police were interviewing one of the other men in the car, and were still searching for the third man, Homicide Capt. James Clark said at an afternoon news conference.

Rodriguez-Ramirez, 26, had been picking up passengers Saturday with his fiancee in the front seat, Clark said.

The men he picked up at Seventh and Clearfield initially asked him to drive to an address in Yeadon, but then asked to be dropped at 54th and Delancey Streets.

Once there, Dilligard pointed a gun at the fiancee, Clark said. He gave this account of the events that followed:

"Give me everything, or I'll kill her," Dilligard said.

The terrified Rodriguez-Ramirez gave Dilligard everything he had - just $30, Clark said.

"I have nothing else. Please don't hurt her," Rodriguez-Ramirez pleaded.

The men got out of the car. Then, police say, Dilligard pointed the gun at Rodriguez-Ramirez and fired once, hitting him in the head.

The woman was unharmed.

"She's very, very traumatized," Clark said Monday. "Her fiance died in her arms."

Rodriguez-Ramirez had answered seven calls Saturday, and was driving close to the eighth. He requested it at 5:58, according to La Primera's internal GPS-tracking system, and picked up the passengers at 6:18 p.m. Sometime in the intervening 20 minutes, the warning should have appeared on his tablet.

"He's new," said La Primera's owner, Juan Olivo. "He didn't get to see that. One of our experienced drivers, who have looked at that, would have seen that, and flagged it right there."

Also, Rodriguez-Ramirez, once he arrived, did not feel the unease that his coworker had.

Rodriguez-Ramirez had told Olivo he was trying to make ends meet after the death of his father in November, and needed to work as soon as possible. He asked to work the night shift - unusual for a beginner - because his brother had worked for the company. Rodriguez-Ramirez felt he knew the job, Olivo said.

"He was just trying to make an honest living," said Belinda Gonzalez, a relative who answered the door Monday at Rodriguez-Ramirez's house on East Sterner Street. She said Rodriguez-Ramirez's fiancee did not wish to speak.

Despite her ordeal, Clark said, Rodriguez-Ramirez's fiancee helped detectives piece together what happened at 54th and Delancey.

And investigators were quick to identify Dilligard and his companions, thanks to a witness who knew the men and saw them get into the car, Clark said. Detectives also found video footage of the men being picked up.

Clark said investigators believe the men had planned to rob "whichever cabdriver picked them up."