Hey, there! Log in / Register
Woman abducted by driver of what she thought was her Lyft ride home
By adamg on Sun, 02/16/2020 - 1:31pm
WCVB reports a woman expecting a ride from a Union Street bar to her Allston home instead wound up kidnapped and taken someplace north of the city early this morning - she escaped when the guy stopped at a gas station for some snacks and she kicked out a window.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Always ask the driver what your name is
You can keep yourself safe even if your phone has died so you can't check the license plate. Never get into the vehicle without asking the driver your name. If it's your ride, they'll be able to tell you. If they can't, don't get in.
Awful
When my nieces come over and get a Lyft or Uber home I take pics of the driver, license plate, walk to the car & say loudly to them so the driver can hear me, call me the minute you make it home. I just do it so the driver will know one way or another, someone will be looking for them if you're on any fuckery and someone has your info.
They can also share that info from the app
Your nieces can send you a link with the driver/car info, their location/route, and ETA from both the uber and lyft apps.
This is happening way too
This is happening way too often now. Lyft and Uber should have a meeting policy to make their cars more easily identified especially in the dark.
Hear me out on this …
What if … every car had to be identified with markings specified by the city, and a number, and a piece of metal attached to the back of the car, and special lighting on top, and the driver had to display a city-issued license with their name and photograph.
Nah, that would never work.
They tried that
They tried that.
Unfortunately, the system stopped being about public safety and became a classic protection racket: "Pay us money and we'll use force to keep competitors out of your business." People revolted, started using so-called "ride share" services instead, and the rest, as they say, is history: buying into the cartel used to cost $750,000 and now only costs $40,000.
Again in this area?
How many times has this happened in this general vicinity now? Unreal...
Questions
Why did the group of men direct her to that particular car?
A second man who was not in the car told her to stay in it?
She needed to kick out a window to escape the car?
The couple drove her all the way back to town, rather than calling for the police?
Lyft suspended a driver? Which driver? Did she actually get into her Lyft?
I imagine there is a lot of investigation to be done here. Hopefully we hear the results!
Excellent questions all
Furthermore:
WCVB reports the man at the gas station well north of Boston told her to stay in the car.
WHDH reports the man at the gas station tried to grab her through the back window.
https://whdh.com/news/police-woman-trying-to-use-rideshare-in-boston-kid...
have you not heard of child locks?
With a child lock activated, there's no way to get out of the back seat.
Even if the car doesn't have a child lock, it's trivial to pull the door handle and disconnect the cable.
The real question is, why are you looking to be so victim-blamey? Why do you feel anyone involved owes you an extremely detailed account?
My last car was a a silver
My last car was a a silver Toyota Camry (pretty generic) twice while driving around Back Bay looking for parking, someone opened the back door and tried to get in thinking I was their Uber! People need to be more vigilant and careful. If your phone is dead, take a Taxi!
Why are you upset that someone's puzzled?
I don't see any victim-blaming in the questions. It's a WEIRD STORY.
Just trying to get the facts m'am
I don't think he was blaming the victim at all. He's trying to understand what happened, like we all are.
This
And it's she, not he, but yeah, just trying to understand the story which turns out to have been quite a bit different than first reported. I'm glad that everyone has come out the other side okay.
Uber and Lyft get a lot of flack for this type of story and more often than not the perp was in fact NOT an Uber or Lyft driver. Personally, I have felt much more comfortable in ride-shares than I used to in cabs.
Something similar happened to me a few years ago
I was working as a bouncer at Lansdowne Pub and dropped off a co-worker near the White Horse Tavern. After I dropped my friend off and looking to the left to pull out a young female jumped into my back seat. I was like "Um hello" she said drive straight and so I did. She then passed out so I grabbed her phone and it was unlocked so I called the last number on her phone that she texted. The person that answered was her roommate and she gave me the address and I drove her home. I guess not everyone does the right thing in this world. :(
CHECK THAT PLATE
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2020/02/17/boston-police-lyft-driver-attempt...
New Headline: Girl gets in wrong car
The Globe is now reporting that she got into a Lyft headed North, there was a language barrier and the driver did nothing wrong and has been returned to service.
Also, the passenger has been identified...
...as Emily Litella.
"Language barrier"
"Language barrier"
Perhaps there was also a "sobriety barrier" and/or an "inability-to-function-anymore-without-poking-at-a-5"-glass-rectangle factor".
How dare you victim blame!
Of course, the real victim here is the driver that was assumed to be a kidnapping rapist for at least a day.
Adam can you please update
Adam can you please update this now that we know the whole story?
The woman got into the wrong car, and was unable to communicate with the driver due to a language barrier, and then panicked. The driver did NOT abduct her, he merely thought he was completing a different trip. It was just a misunderstanding.
I don't understand how this
I don't understand how this could happen just because of a language barrier.
Yelling, "No, no, no!" or "stop!", or even something the driver couldn't understand while banging on the door, would get the message across.
I think there was another reason. It could be that the passenger was too scared to say anything.