ATLANTA (WXIA) – A warning – if you use one of those social media cab services, like Uber or Lyft, Atlanta Police say a man posing as a Uber driver picked up a woman on Sunday and tried to molest her.
"I absolutely let my guard down," the woman said.
For a local woman, part of last Sunday was a blur. Like thousands of people in town for Pride, she had been out partying in Midtown.
"I left friends and didn't tell them," she said. "I wanted to get home and I just left."
She used her phone to catch a ride with Uber, but with the crowds, there were a lot of cars picking up a lot of people.
"You can see on the screen where the cars are," she said. "And a guy pulled up, said he was Uber, and I was in the car. Next thing you know, I was like, didn't we just pass that?"
The driver could not keep his eyes on the road, or his hands on the wheel.
"He put his hand up my dress, and I just freaked out," she said. "I started kicking and screaming and cussing."
The woman said she knew she was in danger, and jumped out of the car.
"I finally got out and I was screaming, and I ran," she said. "I ran in front of another car down Ponce."
Uber has several safeguards to protect clients – like pictures of your driver, and real-time GPS of their locations.
"Another thing they do is to send you the driver's cell phone number," said John Chaffee with the Atlanta Police Department. "And to err on the side of caution, you can go ahead and call that number and make sure that is his phone while you are there."
The woman says she did not get the picture of the Uber driver until later, and that's too bad, because if she had, she would have seen right away the person she was with was an imposter. She described the imposter as a white male with dark hair and a very thick Russian accent.
Atlanta Police are still on the lookout for the imposter.
