In an article recently published by PEOPLE, singer/songwriter Clare Dunn recounts that in the early morning of June 26, 2021, she was violently assaulted by her Lyft driver. Dunn recounts that that she had gone out for the night with friends and ordered a Lyft with one friend around midnight, requesting that the driver take them both home.
Dunn’s friend was dropped off safely. When the driver began the route to Dunn’s home, the singer asked that he take a, “slower route”, and avoid going on the highway. “We were barreling towards the interstate and I spoke up and was like, ‘Hey, that was my turn. Where are you going? You need to take the next right turn,'” Dunn said. She realized that the driver was becoming agitated. “He was screaming at me. I couldn’t really make it out — his English wasn’t the best. And I just knew in that moment that I wasn’t going to get on that interstate with him. I wasn’t going to go quietly where he wanted to take me. And I think he realized maybe this girl was going to be more trouble than she’s worth.”
The driver eventually pulled the car over about a mile from Dunn’s home. According to the singer, before she “could even get my shoes off or get my phone to try and call 911, he grabbed me by the collar, ripped me out of the backseat and slammed me face-first down into a ditch.”
“Somehow in the scuffle, I thought I called 911, but I didn’t even get the number right,” Dunn continued. “But it was a miracle. They called me back. And when I came to, I was screaming, and I saw headlights. He ended up just leaving me alone at that point and took off.” Dunn’s face was left bruised and bleeding, and she went to the emergency room following the assault.
The singer added, “I had that intuition that something was wrong, and I ignored it,” recalling that both she and her friend having a feeling that something wasn’t right. “The next morning, the friend I was in the car with was telling me, ‘Oh my God, I had this feeling when I got out of that ride. She said, ‘I so wanted to just tell you to get out.'”
“It makes me emotional, but she said, ‘I wanted to tell you to get out and we’ll get another ride, or you could just sleep on my couch,’ and we both ignored it,” Dunn continued. “As women, we sometimes do that but I think when we have those feelings, they are alarm bells. I remember just telling myself that I was overthinking it and I just wanted to go home. That’s all I remember thinking about it and just trying to tell myself, it’s fine. I blame myself.”
The driver who assaulted Dunn has since been identified with the help of a detective and there is currently a warrant out for his arrest. According to a statement made by Lyft, “Safety is fundamental to Lyft. The behavior described is appalling, and we permanently removed the driver from the Lyft platform as soon as we learned of this incident. We’ve reached out to Ms. Dunn to offer our support and are assisting law enforcement with their investigation.”
Dunn stated, “This has been hell. I don’t want anyone else to go through it. Even if it just can keep one girl or one guy from going through this … he knew what he was doing. He hit ‘complete the ride’ after it was done. I didn’t take a screenshot of his license information during the ride. All of that goes away when a ride is completed. All I had was a little tiny profile picture and his first name. It’s a slow process if you don’t have all that info.”