Detectives say Lyft records revealed two prior complaints of inappropriate conduct involving the driver during previous Lyft services.<\/p>\n
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 A Lyft driver is out on bond Tuesday after the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office says he climbed into the backseat with a passenger, began choking her and threatened to kill her.<\/p>\n
According to detectives, Joaquin Reynaldo Mena Vazquez, 27, pulled over into a grassy area during the woman\u2019s ride in October and attacked her.<\/p>\n
HCSO said she was able to convince Mena Vazquez to stop, allowing her to escape.<\/p>\n
Mena Vazquez was arrested on Thursday is charged with battery by strangulation and false imprisonment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis victim simply wanted to get home safely, and instead, she was met with violence and fear for her life,\u201d Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement. \u201cThis kind of predatory behavior will not be ignored. I commend the victim for coming forward\u2014her courage may have stopped this suspect from harming someone else. Predators who target innocent people have no place in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the investigation, the sheriff’s office said it found Lyft records revealing two prior complaints of inappropriate conduct involving Mena Vazquez during previous rides. Those incidents are now under investigation too.<\/p>\n
10 Tampa Bay News has reached out to Lyft\u2019s PR team for comment on why Mena Vazquez was still allowed to drive after the two prior complaints. We also asked about Lyft\u2019s security protocols, driver screening and for more details on those previous incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detectives say Lyft records revealed two prior complaints of inappropriate conduct involving the driver during previous Lyft services.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-142108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}