Lyft Driver Robbed, Claims Passersby Did Nothing To Help Her
Follow KDKA-TV: Facebook | Twitter
SHALER TOWNSHIP (KDKA) -- Kelly Croley is job hunting, something she never expected she'd be doing during the holiday season. Croley has a degree in criminal justice.
Recently, she's been both an Uber and Lyft driver. She likes the idea of earning money on her own schedule, while at the same time, driving her own car.
Croley was driving for Lyft when she arranged to pick up a passenger on Wednesday afternoon.
In the living room of her home in Shaler Township, she said, "This guy is standing there. He flags me down. He said, 'Are you Kelly?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'I'm Devon.'"
Now, Croley isn't so sure she wants to continue working for the ride-hailing companies because of what she experienced.
After driving to Beleau Street to pick up Devon, it seems that he had other ideas. At gunpoint, he stole all the money she was carrying. She said it amounted to $340.
"He opened my coat, unzipped my hoodie, put his hand down my shirt and was feeling around until he found it," Croley said. "He found it, grabbed it -- and he had the gun on me the whole time obviously -- and then he got out of the car."
To make matters worse, she said, the robbery happened in broad daylight, around 4 p.m. Wednesday, and she said there were people close-by, watching it all unfold.
"They were standing there watching, they were facing me on all sides of the vehicle," Croley told KDKA-TV's Ralph Iannotti. "So I think they had to have known what was going on, and I don't know if they were armed or not."
Instead of going to the police immediately to report she'd been robbed, she was so shaken she said, she went home and filed a report Thursday morning. She said neither Uber or Lyft allow drivers like her to carry defensive weapons, including pepper spray and stun guns.
"I don't know what I'm going to do because my money is gone for Christmas, and my daughter still believes in the magic of everything Christmas," Croley said.
She described the robber as black, about 5-feet-6-inches tall – likely in his late 50s.