His first priority was making sure his clients, including many friends, made it home safely. Sometimes, Mike Bemus wouldn’t even take money in return.
“He cared more about others than he did himself,” Sean Casey, a friend and occasional customer said Friday. “He put everybody else in front of things he had to do to.”
Bemus, 65, of Austell, drove a cab for Victory Taxi, and when he was waiting on customers, he made the rounds in Smyrna and Vinings. He was a regular at Laseter’s Tavern at Vinings and other spots in the nearby Smyrna Market Village, his friends said.
Bemus was working early Thursday when he was shot in the head by a man in the backseat of his taxi, according to Marietta police. When officers arrived at the Allround Suites on Northwest Parkway shortly after 2 a.m., Bemus was dead.
Hours later, police arrested the man believed to be responsible for the shooting. Justin Marquis Graves, 34, of Marietta, was charged with murder late Thursday and booked into the Cobb County jail. Graves was being held without bond Friday, records showed.
Already a previously convicted felon, Graves spent nearly two years in prison after being convicted of aggravated assault in Gwinnett County, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections. He was released from prison in February 2012. It was illegal for Graves to have the .380 handgun he allegedly used to kill Bemus.
Friends were shocked to learn that “Mikey” had been killed, and took to Facebook to share condolences and memories of the bearded man who often wore Hawaiian shirts and loved to talk about his grandchildren.
“Not all my customers knew each other, but they all knew Mikey,” Matt Ford, a server at Laseter’s, posted online.
During the trivia game Thursday night, everyone in the bar raised a glass and held a moment of silence for Bemus.
“The arrest gives us a little bit of closure, but it’s not going to help the heartbreak,” Casey said.
Thursday night was also somber at nearby Atkins Park. Kris Hudson, a customer at Atkins Park, said he felt like he’d been punched when he learned Bemus was killed.
“He saved my butt a hundred times by convincing me that I did not want to drive, and if I didn’t have the money, he’d work it out and say we’d make it up the next time,” Hudson said.
Others said Bemus was simply a go-to guy, the one you called when you were in a jam. Another friend, Jen Wilson, said when her apartment flooded, she called Bemus, confident he’d know what to do. He came right over.
“He wasn’t just a cab driver,” Casey said. “He was a friend.”
— Staff writer Colleen McMillar contributed to this article.
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