Cops used a bloodhound in an intense manhunt last night for two men who robbed and killed a livery driver in Queens.
The victim was the first livery driver killed on the job since last May.
Cops responding to a 911 call at 7:30 p.m. found the driver’s body slumped in the front seat of his white Lincoln Continental in Jamaica.
The victim’s name was not released.
The robbers appeared to be passengers, but police said there was no record of a pickup or a drop-off in the victim’s car.
The gunman sat in the back seat of the car and thrust his .380 caliber handgun through the open partition, shooting the driver once in the back of the head.
The cab smacked into a parked car before it came to a stop in middle of 102nd Avenue, near the corner of Remington Street.
Several witnesses saw the men flee the scene.
Cops described one man as a slim, 6-foot black man, wearing dark clothing, and the other as a 5-foot-9, 180-pound black man, with ear-length braids, wearing a shiny silver-gray jacket and pants.
Monique Pearce was visiting a friend on the block when she saw one of the men sprint into traffic.
“He came out of nowhere and ran across the street,” Pearce said. “All the cars had to stomp on their brakes.”
Area resident Neaty Vargas, 19, said she saw children playing in the street just before the shooting.
“It’s a terrifying thing to know that now we have to keep the kids inside, because some crazy person did this and could do it again,” Vargas said.
Until yesterday’s murder, there were just two attacks on livery drivers this year. Neither was fatal.
Ten livery drivers died on the job last year, prompting the city to order livery car owners to install video cameras and bulletproof partitions to separate drivers from passengers.
But a partition didn’t stop the shooter in last night’s killing – and Fernando Mateo, head of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said that if the car had a camera, it wouldn’t have saved the driver.
Mateo said at the scene that his group had been preparing to celebrate a full year without any cabby killings.
“Unfortunately, that’s been disrupted by what just happened,” Mateo said.