Uber passenger fatally stabs New Orleans driver, videos aftermath, sheriff says
A New Orleans Police Department employee who was moonlighting as an Uber driver was stabbed to death by a passenger in what a sheriff said was a random act of deadly violence.
Yolanda Dillion, 54, was a fiscal analyst with the police department, New Orleans police chief Shaun Ferguson said Friday. She was stabbed multiple times Thursday afternoon in her car in the parking lot of a hotel in neighboring Jefferson Parish. She died later at a hospital.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto said detectives worked with Uber to determine the identity of her passenger, who had been picked up in New Orleans.
They found him staying at the hotel.
Lopinto said Brandon Jacobs, 29, of Harvey, La., admitted to the killing.
"He stated that he woke up yesterday morning and decided he was going to kill someone," Lopinto said during a news conference with Ferguson at the sheriff's office in Gretna.
Online records showed Jacobs was being held without bond on a second-degree murder charge. There was no information on whether he had an attorney.
The sheriff said Jacobs posted video of the aftermath of the stabbing on social media and authorities worked with Facebook to have it taken down.
"We asked him specifically, 'How did you pick her?' His response was, 'I didn't pick her, Uber picked her.' Meaning that she was the random person that picked him up that day," Lopinto said.
Lopinto said Jacobs is believed to be from the New Orleans area originally. He told investigators he'd been staying in the Seattle area but had been back in the New Orleans area for about seven months, Lopinto said
Ferguson, who is retiring as the head of New Orleans' Police Department at the end of the year, said Dillion was a 10-year employee of the department. He described her as quiet and humble, adding that she did important work for the department.
"This was just something that definitely blindsided everyone," Ferguson said.
"Our team is taking it pretty hard," he told CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV. "The team dearly loved her. She will be dearly missed. She was quiet. She was humble. She was a quiet giant."
Dillion, a breast cancer survivor, was a constant whirlwind of activity, participating actively in her church, working her day job with the NOPD, attending classes to get her PhD in sociology and driving Uber during her "down" time to make extra money for Christmas gifts for family and children at her church, St. Paul the Apostle in New Orleans East, the station reports.
Dillon lived with and cared for her mother Edna, who is in her 80s and surviving cancer, the station adds.
"My only child," she remarked to WWL, fighting through tears. "I ain't have no other. When your child leaves in the morning, you expect to see them come back. You can't just take somebody's life, somebody who not doing you nothing. ... He just left me with nobody."
WWL notes that New Orleans native Wendell Pierce, the renowned actor currently starring in a Broadway play and who keeps close tabs on his hometown, tweeted his anger at Dillon's loss. They attended the same church.
"Remember her: Yolonda Dillon," Pierce tweeted. "My church member for decades, a woman with a heart of gold & a deep love of God was murdered yesterday, The murderous violence of New Orleans & this country has come even closer to me personally. We are in crisis. America has always been this violent
