A GRIEVING woman is searching for a taxi driver she believes left her mother to die in a Glasgow close in front of her grandson.

A GRIEVING woman is searching for a taxi driver she believes left her mother to die in a Glasgow close in front of her grandson.

Anne Chadwick, 57, fell ill as she collected grandson Ian Ashcroft from Eastbank Primary in Springboig.

She took a taxi to her Tollcross flat but her condition worsened on the trip as she suffered a massive stroke and passed out in the back of the black hackney cab.

Eight-year-old Ian called his mother Anne-Marie McKay on a mobile phone but when she arrived minutes later, Anne was already in a coma.

Now Anne-Marie, 26, wants to know why her dying mother was "dumped like a bag of rubbish" instead of being taken to hospital.

She said: "When Ian phoned I asked him where his gran was and he said: She's in the taxi'.

"I asked him to put the driver on and when I asked what had happened he said she'd had a wee turn but she was fine."

Anne-Marie, who was shopping, dropped everything and drove to the flat to find her mum unconscious on the stairs. She said: "When I got there, she was absolutely grey. I called an ambulance and they arrived really quickly. They did everything they could but it was too late."

The ambulance took Anne to the Royal Infirmary where she died two days later on December 22, the day before Ian's ninth birthday.

Anne-Marie said: "The driver just wanted my mother out of his taxi. He got a neighbour who was passing to give him a hand and then just left her in the close."

Bill McIntosh, secretary of Glasgow Taxis, offered his sympathy to the family and said: "It is beyond my comprehension that somebody could behave like this.

"We have an emergency system that allows the driver to get through to us straight away so that we can contact an ambulance."

Mr McIntosh said it would be impossible to trace the driver, who had been hailed in the street, from the 1400 taxis and up to 5000 drivers operating in the city.

He said: "Unfortunately someone who behaved like this would probably keep quiet about it.

But he warned: "If I find out who this is I will definitely take action against him."

Miss McKay said the driver was a grey-haired man and she believed he was aged 60 as he and Ian had played a game guessing each other's age.

She asked for help tracing the man and said: "It wouldn't have saved my mother's life if an ambulance had arrived earlier, but lying in a close is no way to spend your last minutes.

"How can you just leave somebody to die? This man dumped my mother like a bag of rubbish and went back to his work."

Glasgow City Council, which licenses taxis, said it would be inappropriate to comment on the case, as it could prejudice any future hearing.