A South Florida woman is recounting a scary encounter she had with a rideshare driver that ended with her jumping out of a car. It was around 2 a.m. Sunday when Karina Alegre requested a Lyft from a Coconut Grove bar to her house in Miami Lakes.
A South Florida woman is recounting a scary encounter she had with a rideshare driver that ended with her jumping out of a car.
It was around 2 a.m. Sunday when Karina Alegre requested a Lyft from a Coconut Grove bar to her house in Miami Lakes.
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Alegre told NBC6 she noticed something unusual minutes after getting in the car.
"She started taking very weird back streets," Alegre said.
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Alegre said the female driver was driving erratically and then she realized they were approaching Miami International Airport.
"[I asked] 'Why are we at Miami International Airport?' She did not reply. I asked her again. She did not reply. At this point I'm freaking out. 'Ma'am, can you please stop the car so I can get out?' I asked her for her consent, she denied me," Alegre said.
Fearing for her safety, Alegre said she unlocked the door and jumped out of the car at the airport.
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"She then starts following me for about a minute and a half, she puts down the window. All of a sudden she could speak, in contrast to the way she was behaving when I was asking her where I was," Alegre said. "And she starts saying she is a mother of four, that she is going to protect me, that everything is ok. To please get back in the car, get back in the car."
Alegre said she did not get into the wrong Lyft. After the incident she double-checked she put her home address as the location and that it was not a shared ride.
"The motive was either that she was delivering me to maybe get robbed. I was wearing expensive jewelry, expensive clothing and accessories," Alegre said. "So maybe she was trying to take me somewhere to get me robbed, maybe somebody was going to take me out of the car and rob me, perhaps sexually abuse me, I don't know. Also my thoughts immediately went to human trafficking."
In a statement, Lyft told NBC6 the driver has no previous reports of this type of behavior. The company believes this was an unfortunate misunderstanding.
"Safety is fundamental to Lyft, and we never want anyone in our community to feel unsafe. We reached out to support the rider as soon as we learned of this incident and have been in touch with the driver to address these concerns," Lyft's statement read.
"I can't prove that was the intent. The only thing I can prove is that I was definitely in an unsafe situation and God and my intuition told me I had to jump out of that car," Alegre said.
Alegre also filed a police report. Miami-Dade Police said they are looking into the case.
