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Woman able to escape laughing ride-share driver who'd locked her into his car in Allston, police say
By adamg on Sun, 03/21/2021 - 2:24pm
Boston Police report arresting an Acton man they say responded to a woman's demands that he stop and let her out because he'd been acting strangely by climbing into the back seat with her while she screamed to get people's attention because he'd enabled the child-safety locks so she couldn't get out.
Police say the woman had used her ride-share app - police did not identify which one to get a car at 1139 Commonwealth Ave., in Packards Corner, around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday. But she quickly started getting a bad vibe from the driver and asked that he stop and let her out.
When the suspect stopped the car, the female attempted to open the door but found that the child safety locks had been enabled on both rear doors, making her egress impossible and trapping her inside the vehicle. As the victim began to scream and bang on the glass in an attempt to draw attention to the unfolding situation, the suspect began to climb into the rear passenger area of the vehicle, laughing periodically. The victim was able to quickly slide around the suspect, into the driver’s seat at which time she was able to unlock the door and exit the vehicle, making her way to safety.
Acting on a request from BPD, Acton Police arrested Kamal Essalak, 47, of their town on Saturday. He will be arraigned on a charge of kidnapping, police say.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
They never name the ride share service.
But if it happened on the T we would be told.
Granted, it may not be immediately evident which ride share she used and drivers sometimes work for more than one.
But this doesn’t help anyone not to know what company hires individuals like these predators.
Ochs' Crucifixion
Inquiring minds... As Phil Ochs sang, "How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small. Tell me every detail, for I've got to know it all. And do you have a picture of the pain?"
hope you feel clever with this post
But women need to know where they might not be safe, or should I even less safe. If it was Uber, I'd reconsider using them if they hire people like this. Enjoy your privilege though.
Spock Disapproves
As the Enterprise's science officer might say, "That is not logical, Captain." This is the dangerous flaw of the hasty generalization.
I would urge you instead to gather more information and not rely on a snippet. There is no basis to conclude that if Uber or Lyft or whoever had a contractor who terrorized a rider, the company makes a practice of hiring rapists or those who otherwise act ill toward women. Making a decision on using a ride-sharing service on such scant info does not keep one safe. That's just delusion.
WCVB Channel 5
... is reporting it was an Uber driver and that Uber has confirmed it.
They also called Allston Brighton
Typical boomer media.
I would have done damage to the vehicle
Kicked out the fucking back window.
Kicking out a window
Is a lot harder than movies would have you believe. Windshield glass has a layer of tough plastic between the two layers of glass; it’s designed to stay more or less in one piece in a crash
Jeez
Women need a utility belt at this point.
Also, men need to stop abusing women.
Back and side windows are
Back and side windows are designed to shatter into small pieces. They're totally different from front windshields, which are designed to protect you from flying objects.
But I don't know how easy it is to kick them out.
Not easy
There are great videos of people trying to smash side windows with a hammer. It doesn't work, at least in the videos I've seen. (Probably would work on older cars.) Sometimes the hammer comes flying back and hits the person.
My understanding is that it's tempered glass, which is much harder to crack but once it *does* crack, the whole thing goes at once. It's weaker on the edges, and you can also destroy it with a tap from a sharp piece of ceramic (.e.g from a broken-up spark plug).
Once you break a side window, it shatters into fairly harmless little cubes. I've run barefoot across a pile of those at the site of a car accident to no ill effect -- it was only when I stepped on a piece of side view mirror that I got a cut. :-)
Windshields are a different beast, and yeah, there's a thick layer of plastic to keep it all in one piece.
Break Away
My BIL went into a pond (some idiot was passing on the wrong side of the road forced him off) and kicked out the front window because (as a mech) he knew that it was his best bet.
Side windows are in slots and are harder to kick out: https://www.advancedglasssystems.com/how-to-break-a-windshield-to-escape...
Usual crap from Uber
“We take this seriously.”
No you don’t. If you did, you’d raise the fare to attract kind, decent people to perform what is a kind, decent, social job on its best days.
At the peanuts you charge, and your onerous takeout, you end up with bored 47-year old misogynist loser drivers who take the job just to be around women. Many are harmless.
This one was and is dangerous, and should, at his age, be given the choice of castration or incarceration if found guilty, because 47 is a gross, irredeemable age to be pulling a stunt with child locks on customers.
Castration does nothing to ...
... curb violent controlling tendencies.
Violent offenders don’t get to chose how society will protect itself.
Well
Acton’s a small town. I’d pick jail too.
Our society has gone to hell. Our cops, our courts, and our government are all a sham. And so are we.
Society has been going to Hell from day one
Nothing new.
One question
If "society has gone to hell" then what was going on 50 to 100 years ago with all the lynching events treated as a civic event?
I suspect that many are far better off.
And if you don't think men didn't give women rides to rape them since cars became common, you are owed another think. But women would be blamed and men given a pass up to a short few years ago, unless she was actually murdered or hospitalized or a black man could be blamed.
Also
I wish someone had told the Brits that before they went after Alan Turing’s junk.
I'm sorry????
Did they go after Alan Turing for being violent, then???
You really need to check yourself.
Before I wreck myself?
Even money that you don’t get that reference.
Oh, I do
And I also got the reference to Alan Turing. Where exactly were you going with THAT?
To make the point
That he shouldn't have been castrated.
He wasn't
Turing wasn't castrated, you ignoramus. After being convicted of homosexuality, he was condemned to receive injections of hormones to "cure" him, started growing breasts as a result, and committed suicide.
Before you mouth off so much about everything, and nastily too... maybe you ought to get your facts straight. Although I suspect you don't care about facts.
(Source: I read a biography of Turing.)
Considering
That you made this a personal attack without having a handle, I'd say you're the one who has no balls.
pricing
peanuts is hardly what they are charging, especially with the "peak pricing" games. For those who are willing to wait a few minutes, at least in Dorchester, a traditional taxi is often comparably priced. The sociopath factor among licensed taxi drivers is negligible.
That money
doesn't go directly to the drivers, though.
I've also had enough angry arguments with taxi drivers about whether or not they were legally obligated to take me to my destination, or whether or not their credit card machine actually worked, to seriously question that sociopath factor (and there's also quite a few news stories about people being attacked by taxi drivers...)
Boston taxi rate
$2.80 per mile: https://bpdnews.com/taxi-rates
How many cabbies do you see living comfortably at that rate? Now consider that the UberX rate is 92 cents per mile. https://www.uber.com/us/en/price-estimate/
They apparently charge for pickup time now too, and I'm sure the surges still exist, but that's opaque, and still isn't close to the $2.80 per mile a medallion cab costs.
92 cents per mile is an insult and a waste of time if you're trying to make money. Literally the only reason to drive rideshare is if you're a lonely man who wants to be around women.
I enjoyed that perk of the job when I gave it a try from 2014-2016 (back when it was $1.70 and then $1.24), except I didn't go farther than telling them that their dress/hat/haircut was pretty, and then, on a high from the "thank you", I went home and watched porn like a normal person.
TMI
TMI
For a big-mouthed old-school Bostonian
You're decidedly squeamish.
decidedly squeamish.
Thinking about your sex life will do that to a guy.
My sex life
"I watched pornography." What a lurid detail and deviant act. However will you advance mentally past having read that?
Pornography is not the issue
"I am a sexual predator" is more accurate.
Thanks for making it feel even less safe to simply exist inside a female body while some creep makes suggestive comments and then - maybe he escalates, maybe he doesn't! Maybe he trips the child locks, maybe he jerks it later! Maybe he murders me, maybe he "only" uses me for sexual gratification!
It is a difference of magnitude, not of kind. And predators escalate over time.
You scare the F out of me.
Request to see if child locks are enabled
That’s the advice at the end of this article- I for one, can’t imagine actually doing that. I’ve also been a driver and if someone asked, I probably wouldn’t know where to find them, either! Also- I do have those locks enabled and thought, as a driver, that it was better to unlock them for the passenger when it was safe to exit. Passengers generally don’t look for bikers or etc when they open their doors.
.
You can't disable the child proof locks from inside the car. You have to open the door from the outside, and the lock/unlock switch is located on the door.
Presumably
He also had the window locks on, to keep her from rolling down the window and opening the door.
Depends on the car model, doesn't it?
I've ridden in a couple of cars where there was a "enable child lock" button on the driver side door.
(or you can go a step further to my buddy's old Honda which only had unlock buttons on the drivers side, for all doors).
Creep-evasion tactics
I have to admire this ladies agility - the Ubers I have been in were pretty cramped and she got past this creep, into the front seat, and out the door. No one should be terrorized into having to adopt these kinds of maneuvers, but it was an emergency and she did good.
Great moments in headline Writing
The Globe picked impressively bad copy for the headline for this story.
Language Barrier
Is that what is supposed to keep him from jumping into the back seat?
Time to eliminate this means of abuse technologically
Childproof door locks should be required to have a large fluorescent orange thing visible when they're engaged.