A visibly drunk customer using the ride-hailing service Lyft assaulted and spit on a driver Saturday night, after the two got in a heated argument.
The driver starts recording the video once the intoxicated woman blew her nose into the seat cover on the passenger side.
“Thank you for extending me your seat cover considering I had nothing. You offered me no napkin, no nothing. You didn’t offer me anything to blow my nose,” says the 28-year-old rider, who St. Petersburg Police in Florida identified as Stephanie Young.
“You didn’t ask … You didn’t ask,” replies the driver, believed to be known as Michelle Jennings. “You haven’t spoken to me since you’ve gotten in the car.”
The passenger then continues to wipe her nose and face on the seat cover, while telling the driver that she must be so jealous that she has her as a customer.
“What else do you have to offer me, madam? You were telling me how much of a princess you are,” Young says, after incessantly thanking the driver for the makeshift handkerchief. “What do you have to offer me. Anything else to blow my nose in, a napkin?”
After some more indistinct garbles, the driver is fed up and tells the customer to shut up, or she will kick her out — an inherent right of which the driver reminded the passenger.
“You’re going to offer me to shut up?” Young responds. “Your patient is treating me like, like I’m what. Like, I’m sorry I don’t have the same skin tone as you … So you’re kicking me out of your car, bitch.”
Young then pulls herself forward so she can cough on Michelle.
Completely bewildered and frustrated with her passenger, the driver eventually pulls into a parking lot and asks a nearby security guard to call the police.
While Jennings is trying to alert authorities, Young swats and spits on her, after which instance Jennings drops the recording device, but lets it continue recording.
Jennings claims that Young grabbed her during the physical altercation and wouldn’t let go. After the security guard implored Young to release her grip, she reportedly took off into the night, running in a random direction.
Even though viewers of the video can’t see the two women brawling, Jennings described the altercation as intense.
“Yes, I had goose bumps, I was not really scared more seeing red and trying to keep my wits. I could have done more damage, just like she could have,” Michelle’s YouTube video description reads. “Thankfully I am alive and relatively unscathed…but who knew how sore I’d be today. Hopefully she feels me just the same.”
The driver is not only upset with her passenger, but also her employer (or more accurately, her contractor). “They didn’t help. They weren’t helpful,” Michelle said of Lyft, according to a local ABC News affiliate.
Video recordings have been quite helpful for drivers of Lyft and its ride-sharing big brother Uber.
An irate passenger threatened to falsely accuse an Uber driver of rape in April after the two started arguing for unknown reasons. Luckily for the driver, he caught the whole ordeal on camera.
Travis Kalanick, the CEO and founder of Uber, was also videotaped by a driver. The two got in a passionate debate over Uber’s business decisions, in which Kalanick later felt compelled to apologize for after the footage surfaced.
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