from the LAist

A woman says she was cursed out and then thrown onto the pavement by an Uber driver—and the company was slow to respond and won’t even offer up her driver’s full name for a police report.

Jena, who didn’t want to give her last name because she fears for her safety, told LAist she called for a driver just after 2:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning. She got picked up on the 1600 block of North Alvarado Street in Echo Park, near the intersection of Glendale Boulevard. Her driver, who the app identified as “Tim,” attempted to turn the wrong way on a one-way street, which Jena called the driver on. In response, Tim called Jena a “fucking bitch.” Jena responded, “I’m not paying you to like me, I’m paying you to take me home.”

Jena says Tim then ordered her to “Get the fuck out of my car,” and proceeded to step out of the driver’s seat and open the back door. Although Jena retreated to the other side of the backseat, she tells LAist, “He ran to the left side, opened the door, grabbed me very forcefully by the left arm and shoulder and proceeded to throw me down on the asphalt.”

Jena says the driver took off with her cell phone in his car, which she tracked but she says it looks like he chucked it out the window at some point. She went back to her friend’s house where she had been before and called the police. It took officers over an hour to respond and in the meantime Jena had walked back to her own home. She later emailed a complaint to Uber and went to LAPD’s Rampart station to file a police report later that afternoon.

Although she lodged a complaint through Uber’s official channels, Jena says she never got a response back until she began publicly tweeting about the incident. In subsequent correspondence with the company, the representative wrote that the incident was “troubling” and that they took the issue “very seriously and will be taking the appropriate actions.” Jena adds that the company won’t give her the driver’s name in order to pass along to the detective handling her case. LAist obtained a copy of the police report and it was submitted without the driver’s name. Instead, Uber would be “evaluating” the case and said the driver would be “deactivated” if he was found to be at fault. All they could do for Jena was refund the $4 cancellation fee.

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