Latest rideshare assault case places spotlight on safety

SALT LAKE COUNTY — After the latest rideshare sexual assault came to light in court documents, police urged other potential victims to come forward.

On Monday, court documents revealed that 26-year-old Alejandro Rendon Segovia had been charged with first-degree felony aggravated kidnapping and object rape, as well as second-degree felony obstruction of justice.

According to a jail probable cause statement, police were called on Aug. 30 when an intoxicated woman did not make it to her home in Sandy following an early morning Lyft ride arranged by a cousin.

Charging documents said the driver drove “near” the woman’s home to end the ride on the rideshare app, but then proceeded to drive her around the Salt Lake Valley, swerving at one point on the highway, and yelling and hitting himself at other times.

According to the charging documents, he told the 19-year-old woman she was “like all the other girls” as he began hitting himself in the face.

Prosecutors wrote that the woman eventually made it home approximately 4 hours later on foot, and a subsequent medical examination found bruises and scrapes on her inner thigh and genital area.

According to the documents, the woman said she was “really scared” of Segovia and that he was a “psycho.”

Investigators in the court records said he was a rideshare and food delivery driver, and they raised the possibility that there could be other victims.

“We are concerned that perhaps this isn’t the only time this has ever happened,” Sandy Police Sgt. Greg Moffitt said during an interview with KSL TV on Tuesday. “If that is true, if somebody did ever have a ride from this person through Lyft, we would like to hear from you if you had some sort of similar circumstance.”

A Lyft spokesperson said Segovia was no longer part of the platform in a statement issued to KSL.

“Safety is fundamental to Lyft, and these allegations are deeply troubling,” the statement from the spokesperson read. “We have been in contact with the ride requester to offer our support and are assisting law enforcement. The driver was removed from the Lyft platform, and we will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation.”

While rideshare platforms have previously pointed to their overall safety and features introduced to enhance safety, assaults have occasionally made headlines.

“For me, I don’t think I took enough time to process it when it happened, because I was caught up keeping myself busy trying not to think about what had happened,” said Angela Lang, a survivor of a different alleged rideshare driver assault that was still pending in the courts. “At some point, the magnitude of what happened to me set in, but [there was] a lot of self-care, a lot of patience, a lot of learning about what I could have done differently, what I would have done differently, what safety measures I could take in the future as a survivor who still takes rideshare periodically.”

Lang said she was sharing her circumstances and what she had learned from them in hopes of helping others.

She urged people to research rideshare platforms ahead of time to determine if their security practices align with personal safety values.

She also encouraged not taking rideshares alone, cross-checking driver names and vehicles versus what is listed on the app before getting inside, having an escape plan already in mind, checking to make sure child locks are not activated once inside the rideshare and staying as far from the driver as possible during the ride.

Moffitt also suggested even staying in an active phone or video chat conversation with a trusted friend or relative during the ride.

“You want to stop, and you want to get out of the car and they’re denying you of that right, then we have a crime that’s being committed,” Moffitt said. “Call us.”

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