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At 11 p.m. on
May 14, 1999, 24 year-old Walnut Creek resident Julie Day hopped in a cab
and left the Bubble Lounge at 714 Montgomery Street after being
asked by employees there to leave for smoking in the rest room. Six days
later, her body was found by a backhoe operator at a construction site
near Pac Bell Park and McCovey Cove. Soon after the discovery, police arrested
31 year-old cabbie Jehad Baqleh, who they said attempted as many as eight
times to use Day's ATM card after raping and strangling Day and burying
her body at the construction yard. Baqleh gave conflicting accounts including
that the devil made him do it before settling on the story that Day simply
stopped breathing during consensual sex in the back of his Town Taxi cab.
Because of damage to Day's body by the backhoe, it took San Francisco Medical
Examiner Dr. Boyd Stephens weeks to conclusively determine that her death
was caused by asphyxiation. Baqleh was indicted for the murder in September,
2001 after a series of delays. Day had consumed as many as ten glasses
of champagne before getting into Baqleh's cab with the intention of taking
BART home to the East Bay. Her body was determined by examiners to have
a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal level of intoxication. |
