Uber passenger seen on video coughing on driver is arrested, California police say
An Uber passenger has been arrested after she and other women attacked and coughed on a driver, the San Francisco Police Department said.
Malaysia King, 24, was arrested in Las Vegas on Thursday for assault with a caustic chemical, assault and battery, conspiracy and violating health and safety code, police said. One of the other women, Arna Kimiai, 24, said through her legal counsel that she intends to turn herself in, according to police.
In a video shot by Subhakar Khadka, 32, on Sunday, three women are seen yelling profanities at the rideshare driver.
One of the women, who has been identified as Kimiai and wasn’t wearing a mask, is seen coughing on Khadka before taking his cell phone and ripping off his face mask., according to KPIX.
Khadka told KPIX that he asked the woman to put on a mask and pulled over at a gas station so she could buy one, but they started yelling racial slurs at him. Khadka is heard in the video telling the women to get out of the car.
“If I was another complexion, I would have not gotten that treatment from them,” Khadka, who is from Nepal, told the station. “The moment I opened my mouth to speak, they realized I’m among one of them, so it’s easy for them to intimidate me.”
San Francisco police said Khadka picked up the passengers at San Bruno Avenue and Bacon Street on Sunday afternoon and he ended the ride a few minutes later because one of them wasn’t wearing a mask.
Police said one passenger in the car took Khadka’s phone and eventually gave it back to him. As the women were leaving the car, one of them is accused of spraying pepper spray into the car toward Khadka.
Kimiai, who posted a video of her perspective behind Khadka on Instagram, said he tried to get the women to exit the car on the freeway.
Kimiai said in another video that “all I did was take his mask off and cough a little bit” and called her actions “disrespectful” but still blamed the driver. She also threatened to sue Uber and said, “That’s why I take Lyft.”
An Uber spokesperson said in a statement to an ABC7 News reporter: “The behavior seen in the video is appalling. The rider no longer has access to Uber.”
Lyft also tweeted in response to the video on Tuesday that the rider has been removed from the platform.
“Although this incident did not involve the Lyft platform, the unacceptable treatment of the driver in this video compelled us to permanently remove the rider from the Lyft community,” the statement read. “Driving in a pandemic is not easy. Please wear a mask, respect one another, and be a good person.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 8:24 AM with the headline "Uber passenger seen on video coughing on driver is arrested, California police say."