A teenager in North Carolina attained injuries to her face and body when she jumped from a moving Lyft to escape her driver after noticing his “suspicious behavior.”
According to WBTV, 17-year-old Eziya Bowden hailed a Lyft through the rideshare app on Nov. 1 to return home from work. When the driver arrived, and Bowden got in the car, she said the driver immediately asked an inappropriate question.
“‘How many boys flirted with you?’ He said that right away,” she recalled. “‘Oh, you just look good. I would date you if you weren’t so young.'”
Then the driver began spraying something Bowden said made her feel dizzy and warm, setting off alarms in the teen’s head. She believed the Lyft driver was trying to drug her.
“When I got in his car, it did smell like cigarettes, so when he sprayed one time, it was already like, ‘Oh, it no longer smelled like that.’ But for you to keep spraying it, then roll your windows up, like, I know it’s not about me being nervous or anything,” the Raleigh teen explained.
WRAL reported that the 17-year-old started crying and yelling, yet the driver refused to let her out and wouldn’t cancel her ride. Bowden managed to open the door and jumped out of the moving vehicle on 7300 Fox Road.
“I think if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have made it back home,” the teen stated. “That’s why I did it. Something told me to go (jump). I feel like it saved my life.”
Bowden explained that getting out of the car was better than falling asleep in a strange man’s automobile. The North Carolina teenager said she blacked out when she opened the door and only remembered where she landed. Bowden said the Lyft driver turned around after she jumped and called the police, pretending to be a bystander.
She was taken to the emergency room to be treated for her scars.
In a statement, according to People, Lyft said, “Safety is fundamental to Lyft, and the behavior described is deeply concerning. We’ve been in touch with the rider’s family to offer our support, have removed the driver’s access to the Lyft platform, and stand ready to assist law enforcement with any investigation.”
To Bowden, Lyft’s actions weren’t enough, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever feel comfortable using any rideshare service.
“I don’t think that’s stopping him from anything else,” she said. “It doesn’t really bring me peace at all.”
On Nov. 3, the teen posted a photo of her Lyft driver on her Facebook and Instagram along with her injuries. She also stated the driver’s name was Bruce.
View this post on Instagram
The situation is still being investigated, and no charges have been filed.
WRAL reported that they conversed with a woman in the Raleigh area who had a similarly strange experience with the same Lyft driver but never identified the woman or followed up with the story.
According to a Lyft report, the company has had over 4,100 sexual assault reports between 2017 and 2019. Uber reportedly had a little over 5,900 sexual assault reports.
