Uber driver jumps from moving SUV to escape rider who held her at knifepoint, GA cops say
An Uber driver jumped out of a moving SUV to break free from a rider who had her at knifepoint, Georgia officials say.
“I just remember feeling a ball of fire where the tire drove over me,” Carolina Vargas told WTVF.
Vargas was left seriously hurt after escaping onto Cleveland Highway in northern Georgia, the Cohutta Police Department said in an incident report sent Tuesday to McClatchy News.
The company has safety measures for its drivers, but the trip on Friday wasn’t made through the Uber app, the company said in an email to McClatchy News.
The alleged ordeal happened after Vargas was hired to pick up a man whose semi-truck broke down in Nashville last week, WTVF reported. She drove him to his motel in Cleveland, Tennessee, about 160 miles away, according to the police report.
Vargas arranged to pick up the passenger — later identified as Christopher C. Miller — again on Friday, officials say. During the drive, Miller told her he knew another way back to Nashville, police say.
When Vargas asked about the route, Miller pulled out a knife, according to police.
“I didn’t do anything to trigger him and he put the knife here in my side and said now (you) are going to do what I say,” Vargas told WTVF.
That’s when she decided to get out of the car while it was going 55 mph, according to police. Vargas had “several life threatening injuries” as well as cuts, bruises and missing teeth, officers say.
Officials think Miller left the scene in Vargas’s SUV, according to Greg Fowler, chief of the Cohutta Police Department.
Miller was arrested Monday in Jacksonville, Florida, and charged with “kidnapping, false imprisonment, hijacking a motor vehicle, aggravated assault and possession of a knife during a crime,” The Tennessean reported.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Uber driver jumps from moving SUV to escape rider who held her at knifepoint, GA cops say."
