Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Young Nurse Among Hundreds Raped, Assaulted Taking Rideshares Uber and Lyft

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Registered nurse Cristen Giangarra, 31, is among hundreds of women reporting rapes and assaults by their lift drivers. Giangarra called for a Lyft after a night of celebrating with friends. The ride to her home should have lasted six minutes but was instead was 51 minutes of terror. Giangarra says she fell asleep in the backseat and woke up to her driver raping her. Giangarra sued Lyft, saying the company cut corners on background checks and hired her driver, 54-year-old Larry Ward, despite his criminal history. He has since been charged with kidnapping and rape.Joining Nancy Grace Today: James Shelnutt - 27 years Atlanta Metro Area Major Case Detective, Swat officer, Lawyer, www.ShelnuttLawFirm.com Caryn Stark - NYC Psychologist, www.carynstark.com, Twitter: @carynpsych, Facebook: "Caryn Stark" Dan Corsentino - Former Police Chief, Former Sheriff, Served on US Homeland Security Senior Advisory Board, Private Investigator, www.dancorsentino.com Dr. Kendall Crowns – Chief Medical Examiner Tarrant County (Ft Worth), Lecturer: University of Texas and Texas A&M, Affiliated Faculty: University of Texas Medical Branch Spencer Coursen - Founder and President: Coursen Security Group www.CoursenSecurityGroup.com, Author: "The Safety Trap: A Security Expert’s Secrets For Staying Safe in a Dangerous World", www.TheSafetyTrap.com, Instagram: @s.coursen Kristy Mazurek - Emmy Award-winning Investigative Reporter, President of Successful Strategies PR and Crisis Communications Firm Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. How many times have you said, oh, I'll just call Uber. I'll just call Lyft. No problem. I don't need a ride. And you've got your app. You're all set. How many times have I sent my mother to an appointment, say the hair salon here or there in an Uber or Lyft? How many times? A ride share. First of all, take a listen to this. This is our cut one M hog K M O V four. It opened the back door and was on top of me. Kristen Giangara recounts that horrific flashback from the night of June 22nd, 2019. The nurse was out at a bar downtown for a bachelorette party. Her nightmare unfolded after

her friend called her a Lyft. I chose to use an app designed to safely transport passengers, and ultimately I was punished for this decision. This is what we know. A nurse claims she was raped by a Lyft driver and files a lawsuit against the ride-sharing company saying they sent her a predator. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You were just hearing the rape victim describe what happened. Is it the first time? According to her,

she was sent a predator to pick her up with no idea who was behind the wheel. I want you to hear the tone in her voice as she speaks. Could you play that one more time, please, Jackie? Our cut one. It opened the back door and was on top of me. Kristen Gianghera recounts that horrific flashback from the night of June 22, 2019. The nurse was out at a bar downtown for a bachelorette party. Her nightmare unfolded after her friend called her a Lyft. I chose to use an app designed to safely transport passengers. And ultimately ultimately I was

punished for this decision. Now take a listen to our cut five. This is Claire Kellett at KMOV4. Listen. 30-year-old Kristen Jangara alleges she was kidnapped and raped by a Lyft driver in the backseat of his car in downtown St. Louis in June of 2019. Today, her attorney said they amended the lawsuit because he says Lyft knew the driver was a convicted felon. Now, here's that driver, Larry Ward of St. Peter's. It was in December that he was charged with raping and kidnapping Giann Guerra after he picked her up in his rideshare car. Giann Guerra's attorney says in 2017, Lyft denied Ward's application to become a driver because he didn't pass the background check because of a felony conviction.

In 2018, her attorney says Lyft changed background check companies to Checker. And when Ward reapplied to Lyft that year, Giann Guerra's attorney says he passed the background check and was cleared to drive. So they have also added Checker to their lawsuit. Let me understand this. Did the ride share company actually hire a convicted felon to go pick up a woman alone? Am I hearing this correctly? With me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we are hearing. Is it true? Is it false?

James Shelnut, 27 years, Metro major case, including SWAT, now lawyer at ShelnutLawFirm.com. Karen Stark, renowned psychologist, joining us from Manhattan at Karen Psych, also at KarenStark.com. Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics jacksonville state university author of blood beneath my feet on amazon and star of a brand new hit series on iheart body bags dan corsentino former police chief former sheriff also u.s homeland security senior advisory board at dan corsentino.comcom. Spencer Corson, founder, president of Corson Security Group. You can also find his book, The Safety Trap, online.

But first to Emmy award-winning investigative reporter, Christy Mazurk. What happened, Christy, thank you for being with us, the night that Giancara got a lift? As mentioned, she was out celebrating a bachelorette party and took the Safeway home, or what she thought was going to be the Safeway home. Larry Ward picks her up. She is a little intoxicated

and dozes off in the back seat during the ride. The next thing she knows, he's on top of her. Now, she goes further to state Larry Ward deviated from the route to her house, turned off his rideshare location software before he got into the backseat and before he took her home. So prosecutors are saying she was intoxicated, unable to consent to sex, but even more so about the atrocity. They do say that Lyft knew this man had an extensive criminal history based on the fact that when this woman went in for a check at an area hospital, they got a hit on Ward's DNA with the rape kit.

What do you mean by that? They got a hit on his DNA? Well, they did the rape kit, and the DNA sample that was taken matched Ward's. They had his DNA on file because of a previous felony conviction. Do you know what the previous felony conviction was for? It was. It was for drug dealing and assault. He was sentenced to nine years.

Guys, we are talking about a young woman just 30 years old who takes a Lyft ride home. And I want you to take a listen to what she says happened on that ride. Take a listen to our cut, too, from our friends at KMOV4. This lawsuit says the driver, 53-year-old Larry Ward, picked her up from Tin Roof that night. Giangara says she fell asleep in the back seat and woke up to Ward on top of her. The jumpsuit was below my waist and he was on top of me and he smiled. What was supposed to be a seven minute ride turned into almost an hour. Court documents say Ward turned the app off for 35 minutes while he drove to a secluded street and raped her.

They were able to track his vehicle based on local cameras. Okay, what does that mean to you, Spencer Corson? They were able to track his location based on local cameras. Well, that could be multiple things. It could have been individual ring cameras. It could have been traffic cameras. It could have been anti-crime cameras, which may have been no one would see where he was at the time. You know, to you, Dan Corsentino, former police chief joining us, it reminds me very much, I'm sure you're familiar with the Missing Connecticut Mama 5, Jennifer Dulos, whose

husband, Fotis Dulos, and his girlfriend, his mistress, went around the night of her disappearance all over town, throwing away bloody clothes, bloody rags, things from the crime scene where she was murdered. It was all caught on video, but that wasn't the end of it. They, police, used all sorts of cameras, ring cameras, red light cameras. Even this really impressed me, Dan Corsentino, when a public bus opened the doors, you see Fotis Dulos driving by. I mean, they retraced his entire route the night his wife was murdered through all of these public cameras. And they trace him all the way to a detailing shop where he goes and gets the car that later revealed her blood and hair in it.

Totally detailed. Clint trying to get rid of evidence. So it was amazing the way they cobbled together all these bits and pieces from cameras and came up with the entire route of him trying to destroy evidence. What about that, Dan Corsentino? That's some pretty good police work. Well, it's excellent police work. First of all, you have a suspect that goes dark,

and he has with intent committed a crime, which he did. There's no question about that. But the police work and the forensics that were involved, not only with the cameras and the tracking system, but probably they were able to get into eventually the brains of the vehicle, the hard box, if you will, and they were able to extract the evidence of his route, which was the nail in the coffin in this case, so to speak. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

Guys, we are talking about a young woman, just 30 years old, who takes a Lyft ride home. According to her, she was sent a predator to pick her up with no idea who was behind the wheel. And you know, James Shelnut, guys, Shelnut, not just a lawyer, 27 years in SWAT, in a major case in SWAT. James Shelnut, you and I talked about a recent case where a beautiful young woman goes for a walk with her dog. Yes, it was at night. Don't blame the victim. Don't start with me when she gets off work. So she takes the dog for a walk in Piedmont Park. It's like

Central Park in New York. Okay, that's what that is. And she ends up getting brutally murdered, and her dog is murdered as well. And that's when we find out that all of these security cameras in Piedmont Park, of all places, none of them have worked since about 2018. And the city knew they weren't working. The software was outmoded and it wouldn't work anymore. So the point is, Shellnut, we're never going to get photographic evidence of that or video evidence of that. Just like with Chandra Levy, that's when it came to my attention for the first time. Chandra Levy goes out, we think, for a jog, but guess what? The building's video surveillance taped over every 72 hours. So we don't know if she left with her killer, if she left with a group, if she was dressed in an evening dress,

if she was dressed to go to work, if she was dragging a suitcase behind her, or was she dressed to go jogging? And it really stymied the investigation. That case went unsolved for years until somebody happened to stumble upon her bones at Rock Creek Park. My point is, here, they've managed to cobble together all of this. How important is it that cameras are in working order? It's critical. I mean, that's why they're there in the first place. There's a need for them. I mean, for them not to be working creates a danger in and of itself. And we see it over and over and over. And I think at some point you're going to start seeing lawsuits against municipalities and others that don't keep their camera, their security cams working.

I guarantee you it's going to happen. Guys, we are talking about a really beautiful 30-year-old woman who gets a lift on the way home from a bachelorette party and says she was brutally raped. And this is super creepy, Karen Stark. Did you hear what she says? She wakes, kind of comes to, she'd been asleep in the back seat. She wakes up. Her jumpsuit was pulled below her waist. This guy was on top of her raping her and he smiled. What did he think? He was having a date? Well, I think he smiled, Nancy, because he's sinister and was enjoying what he was doing.

And if you think about what this experience was like for her, I mean, I've taken Lyft, haven't you? And she's in the car and she's needing to sleep, feeling a little intoxicated, but believing that she's safe. That's the key point here. She feels like she's safe. She assumes that this is a good person who's been checked out. And in fact, he's a criminal. And she wakes up to this horror. To you, Joseph Scott Morgan, Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University. P.S. I love your new podcast, Body Bags, with Joe Scott Morgan.

Joe Scott, let's talk about the rape kit. Because you heard Christy Mazurek accurately say they got a hit. Now, when I said, what do you mean by hit? She meant that the DNA taken from the rape kit from the victim, Kristen Gingara, matched to the defendant, the Lyft driver in this case, Larry Ward, I was thinking of another kind of hit, as in, you know, a hit on CODIS. Explain what I'm talking about and how you can find out from a rape kit somebody's criminal history. Yeah, if someone is a violent offender, and many times it has to do with an individual's proclivity for, say, sexual offenses where they're assaulting people, this sort of thing, where they are identified as

a risk and they are so convicted, they will have to submit a sample to a system much like CODIS, as you mentioned. There's also STATUS, which is a state to state and lettuce, which goes in a local system as well. But you're saying the DNA goes in because you've got aphids for fingerprints, right? You've got codas for DNA. There's even a data bank for ballistics. Say there's a shooting, I find a bullet on the scene, I take it, I enter the striation marks or the marks on the bullet that it obtains, hurling down the gun. There's only one lock. It's like a fingerprint to us as it relates to a bullet. You put it into the bullet databank, and you get a match if that gun has been used in another crime.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. The ATF manages that system. And then the FBI actually manages the CODA system. So you have these sexual offenders with very specific identifiers based upon their DNA fingerprint, if you will. Remember, Nancy, we're talking about something that goes, you know, when we think about, say, old forensic serology, where we're looking at blood types, the most rare blood type, of course, was AB neg. And we're talking, I don't know, maybe one in every 249 people would have that. Now you take something out with DNA and you're talking about sometimes they talk about terms of billions and trillions and even quadrillions of the chances that this would be anybody other than the individual identified. This guy was actually in the system.

So when they did the rape kit, which means they had to do swabs and pubic combings and all those sorts of things, they were true. Wait a minute. Whoa, wait a minute. Everybody out there, especially you ladies, let's just did you hear what Scott Morgan just said? And he's right. A pubic combing. You want to explain what that is, what a rape victim has to go through? Joe Scott? Don't use words. I'm a JD, not a DDS. I don't know how to pull a T. It's humiliating for the women you think about the swabbing that go on where they actually take the fluid swabs

that come out of the vagina and the anus this sort of thing but they also do combing right there the swabbing that come from the vagina and the anus in other words they take a q-tip about that long and it is inserted into your vagina and your rear end.

OK, now everybody in this set, now they're cringing. When you said it, it didn't really bring it home. That's what that is. That's what a rape kit is. It's not fun. Then you have a pubic coming. Do I have to Q&A with myself, Joe Scott, or do you think you can spit it out? No, absolutely not. I was going to tell you what a fine-tooth comb was.

And so these little tiny combs are used to extract hairs from the pubic area. And what will happen when you have this intimate contact that goes on in a rape and an assault like this, the pubic areas brush against one another and we slough hair. So the perpetrator commingles their hair with the poor victim here. That hair is actually lifted with a combing kit and that's submitted as well. Okay, see, when you say it like that, I learned on my very first jury trial, don't put perfume on the pig. They take a very fine-toothed comb. You ever heard that? I'm going to go through it with a fine-toothed comb.

We've all heard that, right? That means the teeth of the comb are so close to each other. And then they take that comb and they comb your whole pubic area, everything, to see if they can lift a hair from the defendant off of you. Now, okay, now I'm seeing grimacing. Yeah, a lot of it. That's how you explain that. Because that's what the victim has to go through.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. James Shelnut, I assume that you've either defended or prosecuted a sex assault case, a child molestation or rape case. Have you ever? That's right. Okay. The first time I did that, I could hardly spit the words out. It was embarrassing.

The victim was embarrassed to have it stated in court. The ladies on the jury were like, ew, I didn't want to say it out loud. But this is the harsh reality of crime. You have to deal with things you don't want to deal with. They're not nice. They're not pretty. They're horrible. But there's a goal, and that is a true verdict. So this is what you have to do in order to explain it to a jury. James Sheldon, I'll never

forget the first time I had to say the F word, the P word, the C word, the every word in front of a jury because I was reading a statement that the defendant had made. And under any other circumstances, I would have washed my own mouth out with soap. But I had to say what he said. And after that one jury trial, I didn't have any problem with it after that. Apparently, Joe Scott Morgan has not gotten to that level yet. What about it, Shelnut? I don't know about Joe Scott, but I will tell you this. I will tell you that the truth of what happens sometimes is extremely ugly, as you point it out.

It's about to get uglier, Shelnut. It's about to get uglier. How many times, Christy Mazurek, do we think Larry Ward has attacked women? It's alleged about a dozen. Some of the cases, and speaking with this esteemed panel, you try to do the right thing and bring justice. He pled out to some cases, and some cases were thrown out of court because the victims wouldn't testify. Did you hear that? About 12 times. We think... Nancy, it's also, this is Spencer Corson. It's also important to remember that only 30% of

sexual assaults are reported. So it's likely that number is three times higher. Hey, Spencer, I want to follow up with you on that. First of all, will you say that again? Yes, ma'am. For every 1,000 incidents of sexual assault, only 300 are reported, which means about three times as many sexual assaults as we hear about are actually occurring. So if you have someone who is convicted of sexually assaulting five people, the reality is they probably sexually assaulted 15 people throughout their history. And really, Karen Stark, do you blame the rape victims? Karen Stark with me.

We're now in Psychologist joining us out of Manhattan. I told you about this case. where the perp had kidnapped, raped, and murdered a young woman going on a jog in Atlanta. Her name was Julie Love. It was a huge, huge case at the time. Years passed until finally the perp's girlfriend was afraid he was going to kill her, and she told police her boyfriend was the perp's girlfriend was afraid he was going to kill her. And she told police her boyfriend was the perp. Long story short, we start working up similar transactions, other attacks. And I had one lady who he had actually put in a car trunk and raped.

And driven all around town and raped her and raped her and raped her. Her husband came to the trial. And when this similar transaction witness got up on the stand, Karen, she would not say she had been raped. She would not say she was raped in front of her husband. There's nothing we could do about it. We knew she had been raped. She told us she was raped, but she could not bring herself to say it with her husband in the courtroom.

And in her culture, it was a bad thing. It made the woman somehow demeaned. So there's so many reasons rape victims don't report, and they're all heartbreaking. And most of them, Nancy, just as you said, and I remember that story involves shame. I mean, here's a case where a victim is blaming themselves because they feel so ashamed that this happened to them. And they're only getting that because of society. We are in the past, not anymore, but it used to be, you know, you could be provoking someone if you didn't dress the right way. And now we don't feel that way, but it lingers.

That whole belief that somehow you should not have had that happen. You should have been able to prevent it. Now, isn't this true? Christy Mazurek that asked about Lyft's response within 24 hours after the victim's report. Their first response was, it never happened. But then the next day, they refunded her $93.99, but they still charged her $12.81 so she could be kidnapped across state lines, raped, and trafficked. That is true, and that is a woman by the name of Allison Turcos.

She was held at gunpoint by her Lyft driver, driven from Brooklyn to New Jersey to a park where she was gang-raped by the driver and two of his friends before they took off. Take a listen to our Cut 10, our friend Nikki Batiste at CBS. According to Turcos, recently filed lawsuit, a rape kit administered afterward confirmed evidence of semen from two men on the clothing she wore that night. In the suit, she says she initially blocked out what happened and reported to Lyft only that her driver had taken her outside of her route and across state lines. You call Lyft within 24 hours. And what's their response to your first report? Their first response is that this never happened.

The next day, they send me an email that says, we've refunded you $93.99. We are still charging you $12.81. So Lyft charged me $12.81 to be kidnapped across state lines, gang raped, and trafficked. Now that is Allison Turco's 31-year-old rape victim. Take a listen to more about her case regarding a Lyft driver allegedly raping her. Our Cut 11 CBS. Turco says she filed a police report after she was allegedly raped. This week, the law firm representing her filed five lawsuits and says it currently represents around 68 women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by Lyft drivers. Just two weeks ago, 14 women filed suits against Lyft,

alleging it mishandled sexual assault complaints and in some cases allowed drivers to continue to work. The driver was able to make a new profile, update a new profile photo, and update a new name, and was still driving for Lyft. I want to talk about Allison Turcos and Kristen Giangara, both victims of alleged rapes, and take a listen to what Lyft had to say about Giangara's lawsuit in CyberCut 7, and this is from our friends at KSDK5. Last month, Lyft filed a response to Gingara's lawsuit.

It states Gingara failed to act as a reasonable and prudent person with regard to her own safety. I think it sends a message that victims have blame in what happens to them, and it's so not true. A spokesman for Lyft tells me the language in this lawsuit is pretty standard for these types of cases, and it never meant to upset the victim. The company says they plan to amend the filing. Giann Garra says that's not enough. I think it really shows that their priority is not the safety of their customers. Thank you. New York psychologist joining us from Manhattan. That goes to what you said, shame. Rape victims are made to feel ashamed, like it's their fault.

And here you have Lyft filing a response to her lawsuit saying she's the one that failed to act reasonably and prudently regarding her own safety. They're actually blaming her for getting raped in a Lyft car. Are we surprised, Nancy? I mean, that's exactly what happened. Why people don't come forward. I mean, it's just outrageous because that's the kind of crime. You would never see that happen in a regular crime. When it comes to rape, it's so often that the victim winds up being blamed, charged.

It's wild. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Jessica Morgan, how can these cases be linked? How are we ever going to find out how many people, if there are more, that the suspects Larry Ward and Alfonso Alarcon Nunez have? How many rapes have they committed? How can we find that out? Well, it's going to be difficult. And going back to what had previously been said, Nancy, and this is the real tragedy, is the fact that many times these people, these victims are terrified to report Nancy. And so when that happens, the chain is essentially broken relative to the evidence. You don't know how many people are out there. Remember, there's probably half again as many people that haven't reported as have reported and then you

run into the problem of well are they collecting the evidence correctly and is it is it actually even being submitted there's a national problem with rape kits submission in this country so everything breaks down of course the victim is not explaining the problem you're right there's what is it oh i can't explain the problem the apathy, I think, and laziness on the job. You have rape kits that sit in evidence rooms, and this is biological sample, Nancy, that are very, very fragile, and they'll begin to break down if they're not submitted very soon. And you've been in evidence rooms. You know they're horrible places, and they're not correctly prepared to take care of these samples many times.

So you have multiple places along the continuum where it breaks down. Of course, at the end of the day, the victim is the one. They don't just get victimized by the perpetrator. That's bad enough. But then the courts don't do their job. The police don't do their job. And now you've got a private company like Lyft that's also going to attack them as well? Give me a break. Nancy, if I could just add one thing onto that. Go ahead. I would just like to say that another big problem is that

while it's very easy to say that you take the safety and security of your staff and your customers seriously, the reality is that security and safety is typically like the last line item on a budget. So there's no real standard for what actually constitutes a background check. A $25 truth finder or a paid subscription model where you're doing these en masse at scale is not the same as a due diligence background check. And a lot of times, if you haven't been convicted, it won't show up. So it may not say that you were arrested or charged with sexual assault and those charges were actually dropped. So they're really, in addition to everything else, the corporate responsibility needs to really take the initiative in trying to elevate the standard of care. I really believe that in these cases where you see that the company is allowing predators

to pick up women or pick up anyone, that they should be held criminally liable as well. It can happen. If you're still kind of unconvinced, take a listen to Our Cut 9. This is Alison Turco's describing what happened to her with a lift ride. The minute that the gun gets pulled and is so close to my face, the first thought that came to my mind was like, I'm not going to get home safe and I'm probably not going to get home alive. Allison Turco says a Lyft ride she took in 2017 was only supposed to last around 15 minutes. Instead, she says over the course of 79 minutes, she was kidnapped by her driver,

driven from New York to New Jersey and sexually assaulted by at least two men. What's the one word you would use to describe how Lyft has treated you? Callously. Apparently, this is the tip of the iceberg. Listen to our cut 14 from our princet KRQE. The district attorney says Alarcon Nunez was picking up riders that weren't his, driving those victims to their home where he'd break in, rape them, and then steal their valuables. Alarcon Nunez was a legit Uber driver and had a valid driver's license, but he's not a legal U.S. citizen. Mr. Alarcon Nunez is an undocumented immigrant here in the United States,

a citizen of Mexico who was deported voluntarily in 2005. Homeland Security says Alicante Nunez was deported from New Mexico. He was contacted in New Mexico and was asked if he would voluntarily go back to Mexico. Authorities say that didn't stop him, though, from coming back to the U.S. and becoming an Uber driver in California. Guys, if I could only tell you how many examples we have. Take a listen to our friends at CBS LA, our cut 16. An Uber driver in San Luis Obispo is accused of raping four passengers between mid-December and last week. Police say the driver would scout out parties or bars and then target young drunk women. He would then trick inebriated victims who had ordered an Uber into thinking he was their driver. He then took

the victims to his home where he sexually assaulted them. He used Venmo as an alternative paying system to mask his identity and Uber records. His arrest prompted police to warn customers to only make payments through Uber and to always confirm the driver's identity through the Uber app before getting in. I mean, Dan Corcentino, former police chief, not only does he rape them, but some of these guys go into your home where they drop you off and steal your stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Not only are they perpetrators in the vehicle, but now they become stalkers of the victim. And who's to say that they're not going to repeat the crime and also get to know the neighborhood. You know, it kind of sounds like this needs legislative action at time for these transport companies for mandatory background checks across the board

to try and reduce the victimization of people because there's clearly an expectation of safety for any person that's going to get into a vehicle to be transported and especially a woman, the elderly or young, that is trying to get from point A to point B. But going back to your point, Nancy, absolutely. These individuals now are not only committing a crime, but they're planning the next crime, and that is possibly the burglary and theft of residents. So, Christy Mazurik joining us, Emmy award-winning investigative this, Uber and Lyft argued before the Illinois Supreme Court trying to double down and push back on all of these lawsuits that are flying at them. provision of state law, the Transportation Network Providers Act, states that rideshare drivers are not common carriers, contract carriers, or motor carriers as defined by applicable state laws. So they're arguing that language differentiates them from other common carriers and means

they're not subject to the same liability. They also further maintain that they just continuously monitor their drivers and driver applications. However, their statistics don't support that. There are thousands of reported assaults and rapes coming in year after year. To you, Spencer Corson, founder, president of Corson Security Group and author of The Safety Trap, Secrets for Staying Safe, obviously the rideshare companies are not going to protect us. So what should we do to protect ourselves?

The best thing we can do is to have a healthy sense of skepticism and a moderate dose of vigilance, which is, of course, if you're inebriated and you're tired and you're passed out in the back of a car, there's not much you're going to be able to do to be situational aware in that point. But if you are in a ride or if you are in a situation where you feel unsafe, the best thing to do is to get yourself out of that situation immediately, whether that's using the emergency application in the app, just simply saying to the driver, you changed your mind, you want to get out, or drawing, even just picking up the phone call, picking up the phone and calling someone so that

you can have someone else listening in to what's going on. The more that you can promote your own protective posture, the better your chances of staying safe will be. Because like with everything else, these evildoers tend to not go after the strongest among us. They tend to go after the weakest. Nancy, this is James. Two other things that are very important. I was angry with everything you just said, is there are multiple apps where you can share your locations with family, with loved ones, with friends, and they can monitor whether or not you get from point A to point B. And the other thing is it's very important to not travel by yourself if at all possible. There's safety in numbers. That's

always been the case, always will be. Guys, it's so hard to think up ways for victims to stay safe in a situation like this, but we are trying. First of all, use the app information and verify you've got the right driver. Look at his name and his photo on his ID to make sure you've got the right one. Always try to let somebody know you're taking a ride share. Let them know, hey, I'm jumping in an Uber. Hey, I'm jumping in a Lyft. So someone knows where you are.

Also, tell that special person how long you think the ride will take and promise to text or call when you get home. Not only that, I love doing this. The moment I get in a ride share, I take the driver's picture right in front of him. He knows I've got his ID and his name and his photo. That way he knows I'm onto him. In addition to taking the picture, when you open the door to the ride share look around inside make sure the child locks are not on that's very important child locks not on if you drink before you take the ride share try not to ride alone sometimes you can't help it but if you can ride in a group or at least with one other person of

course trust your instincts if you feel something is off ride in a group or at least with one other person. Of course, trust your instincts. If you feel something is off, don't get in. Or at any time, if the driver is asking inappropriate questions or you feel uncomfortable, call 911 or contact 911 through the app. They will immediately locate the driver's position. Not only that, always carry protection. And I'm talking about a personal alarm, the screamer, or pepper spray. When you need it, you'll be glad you did. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off.

Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast. off. Goodbye, friend.