Livery driver loses fingertips fighting off knife attack

Livery driver LaRoyce Southall says he wrested a knife from a passenger who tried to rob him and may have even stabbed the attacker as he fled.
But Southall lost two fingertips and suffered deep gashes to his hands during the struggle, and now  worries how he will make a living.
“My hands are in excruciating pain,” Southall said this morning, his hands wrapped in heavy bandages. “They are damaged so bad, I can’t even grip my steering wheel. I’m going to be unable to work until all of this go by.”
At about 1:10 a.m.,  Southall took a man and two women to the 700 block of North LeClaire Avenue in the Austin neighborhood, where the man put a knife to his throat and demanded money, police said.
Southall said he began working for the West Side livery company about five months ago after similar work on the South Side dried up.
Southall told police he grabbed the knife and, in the struggle, lost two fingertips on his left hand and suffered gashes to both hands. After wresting the knife away, he said, he slashed out himself and may have stabbed the man in the back. The three passengers then ran away, but two of them left cell phones in the back seat, police said.
Having been the target of previous robberies, Southall said he regretted not  immediately sensing danger when he made his pickup.
"The young lady (who called the livery) said there were only two women (to be picked up). I get there and there's a guy also," Southall said. "That's a flag right there."
Even when that young man pulled a pair of black gloves from his pocket, alarm bells that should have gone off didn’t, he said.
But after the knife was placed to his throat and he handed over $30, Southall  said his instincts kicked in.
“I was like, 'Let me get this (knife) away from my throat,’" Southall said. "It was near my jugular vein.”
When Southall grabbed the knife, the two men struggled first inside, then outside Southall’s car.
Bloody and in intense pain after the struggle, Southall drove himself about 1½ miles to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, where doctors reattached his fingertips and wrapped both his hands in heavy bandages.
But the doctors warned him his fingertips might not stay reattached.
Police were looking for his three passengers.