BELLEVILLE, Ill. – An Uber ride Friday night in Belleville was supposed to take her home. Instead, Kristina Caruso said the driver ordered her out at an Alorton gas station at about 2:30 a.m. It only became stranger after that.
“I’m a very cautious person. I always snapshot my driver before they pick me up to send to who I’m with,” Caruso said.
She took the first screengrab when she went to meet a black Dodge Avenger and driver ‘Sara’ outside her friend’s Belleville home.
“I walked out to the car with my friend Katie—it was dark, but the car looked like what was supposed to be picking me up,” Caruso said. “It took me a second to realize we were going the wrong way because it was dark out. I was in the back seat, not really paying attention, and then we pulled into a gas station. She pulled up, and she said, ‘Your payment didn’t go through. Get out!’”
Caruso knew her payment went through because she says it showed up on her account as an Uber charge that she also screengrabbed. She said the driver was adamant that she get out.
“There were two men to my right and one man to my left,” Caruso said. “As soon as I got out of the car, they were asking me if needed a ride. They were asking me to get in their car.”
Thankfully, her friend Katie was tracking her on her iPhone when Katie walked out of her house to go pick up Caruso, and she found another Uber parked outside.
“He asked if I was Kristina, and I explained to him, no, that another Uber picked her up and then dropped her off at this location,” Katie Davis said. “He said ‘That was very strange—that it doesn’t show she was ever picked up and that she was still needing a ride.’”
“I’m wondering who the hell picked me up,” Caruso said.
Uber refunded her payment, and when FOX 2 called for a comment, the company gave her an additional $15 to use later. Caruso wants more answers about rider safety.
FOX 2 found a recent case in Kansas City that attorney Andy Smith of Humphrey, Farrington & McClain is suing over. He alleges an Uber left his client on the side of Interstate 35 this past November.
“In a manner that really left her with no options but to walk along the highway to try to get somewhere,” Smith said. “She was trying to do that and was struck by another party and killed.
“It sent chills down my spine because I got lucky,” Caruso said.
Caruso hopes video surveillance at the gas station could reveal who that mysterious driver was. The screenshot she took is one of the few clues, but it shows a plate number with at least one too many digits to be legitimate. And that trip, she said, no longer shows up in her history.
“It completely disappeared from the Uber app after I was dropped off,” Caruso said. “There’s zero evidence of it other than I always screenshot my rides. The actual Uber driver who came, not knowing somebody else had grabbed me—that trip is still in the app available, and it looks like a canceled ride because I wasn’t there to be picked up.”
FOX 2 has been in contact with Uber over this case for the past two days. The company declined to comment other than to say it is actively investigating.