Dashcam video footage reveals the moment when an Uber driver was nearly hijacked by a drunk passenger in California.
On Saturday, Albert Castro—who worked as a rideshare driver for three years—picked up an intoxicated passenger. But moments later, while driving at 65mph on a motorway in Sacramento, Mr Castro had to wrestle control over the steering wheel and his life.
“He goes, ‘Oh, you’re gonna crash.’ No, I’m not gonna crash,” Mr Castro told local news reporters. “And he says, ‘No, no, you’re gonna crash,’ and he laughs and then drifts away and then two seconds later he pops back up and grabs the wheel and we fly across two lanes of traffic.”
The dashcam video footage show Mr Castro smacking the drunk passenger’s hand down, thinking for a moment that he had the situation under control.
But his rider had another idea: crash the car on an upcoming highway interchange.
“He goes ‘I love you brother’ and he lunges for the wheel and grabs and pulls it,” Mr Castro added. “And it was literally every ounce of strength I had to keep us from I still don’t know how we didn’t crash.”
Frightened by the incident, Mr Castro pulled over the vehicle on the high way and put his blinkers in effort to prevent anyone from getting hurt.
The California Highway Patrol identified the passenger as Tswj Vang, 32, and said he is facing DUI charges after violently attempting to hijack Mr Castro’s car after he was picked up at the Corner Pocket Sports Bar in Citrus Heights.
Based on his social media accounts, Mr Vang seems to have a knack for drinking and partying. Vang’s Facebook page features him parting inside a bar about one hour before investigators said he made a second attempt to take control of the steering wheel.
The drunk Uber passenger also posted a Facebook Live from inside the sports bar about 20 minutes before his arrest, investigators said.
Now that the horrifying ordeal is over, Mr Castro—a husband, and father of eight children—is still astonished at how close he was to death.
“I got even more angry at the other guy because taking away that from me, she’s my everything.”
Mr Castro said that Vang has been permanently banned from using the Uber app.
