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- A University of Denver professor took to her Twitter account Tuesday to recount her nightmarish experience with an Uber driver.
- According to the woman, the driver drove off-course, told her he was taking her to a hotel, and refused to unlock the doors.
- Uber said the company is currently investigating the matter, and the driver has been banned from using the app.
Nancy Leong, a law professor at the University of Denver, took to her Twitter on Tuesday to recount a nightmarish Uber ride - where the driver took her off-course and wouldn't let her leave the vehicle.
"What Nancy described is awful and unacceptable. This driver has been blocked from the app and we are investigating," an Uber spokesperson tells Business Insider. Uber says that it has reached out to both Leong and the driver as part of the investigation. A spokesperson for the University of Denver told Business Insider that Leong is not currently interested in speaking to the press about her experience.
Leong appears to have deleted her Twitter account just hours after her story began to spread.
However, according to her now-unavailable tweets, Leong was being taken to the airport when she says her Uber driver instead drove off-course and got off the highway. He allegedly told her he was going to take her to a hotel. When the car was stopped at a red light, she said, the Uber driver ignored Leong's demand to unlock the doors.
He eventually let Leong out of the vehicle after Leong began pounding on the windows and shouting, which got the attention of some nearby construction workers, she said. When Leong demanded the driver open the trunk so that she could grab her suitcase, she wrote, the driver got out of the car and came toward her. She thanked the presence of the construction workers for encouraging the driver to back down.
Furthermore, she expressed concern that the driver has her home address, since that's where she was originally picked up.
About an hour after her posts to Twitter, an agent for Uber Support replied to her comments, saying that the company takes these matters seriously, and asked Leong to get in touch. Usually, in cases like these, Uber blocks both driver and rider from the platform as the investigation gets underway. However, in this situation, only the driver was banned, the company tells Business Insider.
Take a look below to see her account in full.
Twitter/Nancy Leong
Twitter/Nancy Leong
This isn't the first time an incident like this has occurred. In 2014, an Orlando woman accused an Uber driver of groping her chest, and asked the driver to stop and resume driving for fear of angering him.
In 2015, a woman was allegedly raped and beaten by an Uber driver in Delhi. Uber suspended the driver following the incident, and the woman went on to sue the company before eventually dropped the lawsuit.
Following the Delhi incident, Uber introduced a "panic button" feature in its app for Indian riders, allowing riders to directly and discreetly call the police. The "panic button" feature was rolled out for the Uber app in the United States just last week.
Along with the new safety features, the company will begin conducting annual criminal background checks on drivers in the United States, with plans to continually monitor criminal charges and arrests in an effort to keep riders safe.