The woman is being held on a $1.5 million bond.
A woman in the United States who shot her Uber driver after mistakenly believing she was being kidnapped is facing murder charges. According to New York Post, the incident took place in Texas on Friday, June 16. The woman, identified as 48-year-old Phoebe Copas, shot her driver, Daniel Piedra Garcia, after she wrongly thought he was kidnapping her to Mexico.
Ms Copas is charged with felony aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury. She is being held on a $1.5 million bond, El Paso police said in a statement. The family of the driver, on the other hand, said he was taken off life support on Wednesday.
According to the outlet, Ms Copas, who is from Kentucky, was in Texas visiting her boyfriend. She called an Uber to take her to visit her boyfriend at a local casino after he got off work. However, the 48-year-old then allegedly became worried when she saw highway signs for “Juarez, Mexico”.
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Ms Copas claims that’s what led her to believe she was being kidnapped and taken to Mexico. She pulled out a revolver from her bag and shot the 52-year-old driver in the back of the head and wrist, causing the car to crash. Before calling the cops, Ms Copas even took a photo of the incident and sent it to her boyfriend, People reported.
“The investigation does not support that a kidnapping took place or that Piedra was veering from Copas’ destination,” police said, as per the outlet. “His passenger shot him in the head because she believed he was kidnapping her and taking her to Juarez, which was not the case,” the driver’s wife separately said in an online post, adding, “Daniel was simply following the route from the Uber app”.
Speaking to a local media outlet, Uber said that the company was “horrified” by the rider’s actions. “Violence is not tolerated on the Uber platform and we banned the rider as soon as we were made aware of what occurred,” a spokesperson for the company added.