Uber driver held on $100K bail for kidnapping, rape charges after passenger assaulted

UPDATE: Prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against 58-year-old Ahmed Hassan Ali for second-degree rape and one count of kidnapping in the first degree with sexual motivation aggravating circumstance. Click here for the latest story.

The previous story is below:

OLYMPIA, Wash. - An Uber driver in Thurston County is being held in jail on suspicion of rape and kidnapping after allegedly assaulting a female passenger.

The Washington driver, who KOMO News is not naming because charges have not been filed against him, was found by the victim’s father during the attack, according to a sheriff’s report.

The incident began early Saturday morning when deputies from the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office responded to reports of gunshots in the area of Gardner Ct. SE and Nisqually Park Drive SE in an unincorporated area of the county.

A 911 caller reported hearing someone say "I don’t want to kill you" followed by two gunshots and then vehicles leaving the area, the sheriff’s report states.

A responding deputy stopped a car on Sixth Avenue Southeast and found the driver, later identified as the Uber driver, bleeding heavily from his head and hands.

The deputy called for medics to respond to the scene and noted that there was a cell phone, a black T-shirt and a single shoe in the backseat of the Uber driver’s car. The driver said those items did not belong to him and attempted to leave the scene on his own before agreeing to go with paramedics to the hospital, the report states.

Other deputies who responded to the incident made contact with family members of the victim, including her father.

According to investigators, the victim had been out drinking with friends at a bar when one of her friends ordered her an Uber to go home. The friends were with her when she got in the Uber and then went to a different bar before returning home.

The report says when the victim’s friends arrived at her house, they realized she was not there. The friends told deputies they were alarmed because the drive from the bar to the house was only 12 minutes, and she should have been home roughly 30 minutes prior.

The friends alerted the victim’s father, who then checked his daughter’s location and saw it was near the Nisqually River on 6th Ave SE. The father went to the location with other family members and found the Uber driver’s vehicle in a gravel pullout.

According to the report, the family found the victim unclothed in the backseat of the Uber and the driver was "jumping over the center console" and appeared to be trying to hold his pants up.

Sheriff’s officials say the victim's father fired a gun twice during the confrontation, but the shots did not hit anyone. The family, however, did assault the Uber driver while getting him away from the victim, according to the sheriff's report.

Thurston County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rudy Breteler said in court Monday that the driver's injuries at the time he was found by the were "substantial." Breteler added that he believed it was suspicious the driver attempted to leave the scene without medical care due to the extent he was injured.

Deputies noted the victim was so intoxicated she was incapable of consent, and she did not remember what happened between being picked up at the bar and arriving at her house.

Investigators said the friend’s Uber app, which was used to get the victim a ride, showed her being picked up at 12:17 a.m. and dropped off at an address that was not her residence at 12:31 a.m.

The Life 360 app on the victim’s phone showed she was in a moving vehicle for 23 minutes and had passed the Uber dropoff point and then continued to the point where the family members found her.

“Marking (victim) as dropped off in the Uber app, yet continuing to transport her to another location, demonstrated (suspect’s) intent to conceal (victim’s) location where he believed no one could find her so that he could sexually assault her,” Breteler wrote in a declaration of probable cause filed in court.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge John Skinder set the suspect's bail at $100,000 in a hearing Monday afternoon. Skinder also imposed conditions that if the suspect posts bail he can have no contact with the victim, possess weapons or work on any rideshare platforms. The suspect would also have to be on a GPS monitor if he posts bail, Skinder ruled.

An arraignment hearing for the suspect was set for July 2.

Uber sent the following statement to KOMO News in response to the allegations:

The driver’s behavior is appalling and has no place in our society or on the Uber platform. We take reports of this nature very seriously and removed the driver’s access to the platform as soon as we were made aware of the incident. We have a dedicated team standing ready to assist law enforcement with their investigation.