Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and on this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into the unsettling world of deaths linked to Uber and Lyft rides. As a forensic death investigator, I’ve seen firsthand how a routine trip can turn tragic, leaving families and communities shaken. We’ll explore the cases of passengers who never made it home, the challenges in investigating these crimes, and what steps are being taken to improve safety. Fasten your seatbelts, because this deep dive into the darker side of rideshares might change the way you look at getting from point A to point B. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 I hope y'all are ready for Christmas.
0:33 I have done so much shopping and I still need to start wrapping stuff so that I can kind of sit back and see what all I've got, make sure that I didn't forget anybody.
0:44 It's so stressful.
0:46 I've had dreams before where I wake up Christmas morning and forgot to go shopping and.
0:52 I didn't have anything for anybody, and it was horrifying.
0:55 It's like one of those dreams where you get on the school bus without getting dressed first.
1:01 I mean, yeah, it's horrifying.
1:04 Hello Kitty has come back with a vengeance.
1:07 I can remember how popular it was when I was younger.
1:10 Now my grandbaby is obsessed with Hello Kitty, so I have bought so many Hello Kitty things.
1:17 I never thought I would do that again.
1:18 My daughter didn't want her to like it, but she does.
1:23 We're doing all kinds of things.
1:24 We're doing blankets, we're doing robes.
1:26 I think I found her a trash can of all things.
1:30 It's fun though.
1:31 I love shopping, probably a little bit too much, but anyway, I can't believe that Christmas is already only 9 days away.
1:41 We need to get on the ball.
1:42 Those of us who aren't completely finished definitely need to get on the ball.
1:46 And the weather in Texas, I probably bore y'all with Texas weather all the time.
1:52 But y'all, I swear it was like 30 something degrees the other day.
1:55 We were all freezing.
1:56 We were wearing our coats.
1:59 This weekend it was like 71, burning up hot.
2:04 Today I went on a fatality accident.
2:06 It got so hot outside.
2:08 I mean, I wore my scrubs.
2:10 I didn't need a jacket.
2:11 This morning I started to walk out the door and panic because I didn't have my jacket on.
2:15 I walked out, and I was like, huh, it was so humid I could barely breathe.
2:19 And so when I got to the scene, I thought, well, surely standing outside for a long time, it was kind of overcast.
2:25 It looked like it was going to rain, and I thought I was going to get cold, and I was literally sweating.
2:31 There was extrication involved.
2:33 There were some firemen in training, learning how to use the jaws of life.
2:39 We kind of let them practice getting the young man out of the vehicle, and I'm not going to lie on scenes like that, I kind of start scoping out bushes because.
2:50 There are no bathrooms within miles, and I could just not knowing how long we're going to be there, I could feel it creeping up on me and I was like, I'm about to have to go behind that bush over there, but I made it luckily.
3:04 I hate to have to do that, especially when there's like 10 state troopers and 20 firemen and everybody standing around and they would know what I was doing if I went to the bushes.
3:17 Anyway, I really didn't want to have to do that, and I made it.
3:20 Want to talk about a couple of stories and I know we always talk about Uber, and we use Uber a lot.
3:27 We are Uber Eats and DoorDash freaks.
3:31 We just order out a lot because we get home so late and it's just difficult to cook dinner and then clean up and I would rather just come home and relax and we try to eat healthy, but we do Uber a lot and I am extra as my husband says, and I've got a cart outside my front door that thinks all of our delivery drivers, whether it be UPS, FedEx, Uber, or the mailman, thanking them for getting us whatever it is we ordered.
4:06 And there are treats on there.
4:09 I have Propel, I have water, I have Dr.
4:13 Pepper Zero, and then all kinds of snacks, beef jerky, nuts, I've healthy stuff, and then I've got popcorn and Pop Tarts, and a Rice Krispie treats and all kinds of stuff.
4:27 It's cool to me at the end of the day when I go outside and take that cart off my porch to see what all has been taken.
4:34 I don't know, I think it's neat.
4:37 It's like doing things for people, so it's kind of fun.
4:39 But back on the subject of Uber, I know that there have been a lot of incidents with drivers where people have been killed and there are cases where the passengers have been killed and there are also cases where the drivers have been killed.
4:54 It is dangerous, and we trust these companies to do background checks in.
4:59 We trust these companies to make sure that some crazy lunatic does not come pick us up at our house and take us to the airport at 4 in the morning, and then we end up on the side of the road somewhere.
5:13 There was a case in El Paso, and this happened back in June of 2023.
5:23 It's been a while since this happened, but Phoebe Koppa was visiting Texas from Kentucky, where she lived.
5:32 She was here in Texas in the El Paso area, visiting her boyfriend.
5:38 She was accused of shooting and killing Uber driver Daniel Piedras Garcia, and this again was back in June of 2023.
5:48 They were riding on US Highway 54, and Koppa believed that she was being kidnapped by Garcia and she thought that he was taking her to Mexico.
6:03 It apparently scared her so much that she pulled a revolver out of her purse and shot him in the back of the head.
6:12 The police report says that COA said that she saw signs that said Juarez, Mexico on them as they were driving down the road and so she believed that she was being kidnapped and this is what led her to fire her weapon.
6:31 Now apparently, she had asked Garcia to pull over when she started fearing that she wasn't being taken to her destination, but he did not comply.
6:44 She states that she asked him to let me out of the vehicle, and Copa said that the child locks were on.
6:54 She attempted to get out of the moving vehicle and noticed the doors were locked and she attempted to get out through the windows and the windows were locked.
7:04 She just claims that the driver said that he was taking her to the fair in Juarez, which was underway at the time of the shooting, so this guy ended up dead.
7:18 This happened about a quarter of a mile from the bridge of the America's point of entry.
7:23 Law enforcement originally said it was not near a point of entry, but it turns out that it was.
7:29 She had been to El Paso a couple other times.
7:32 She wasn't super familiar with it.
7:35 She was familiar with that particular route.
7:39 But she wasn't familiar enough to know the border points.
7:43 The story is again that she felt like she was being kidnapped and this is the reason that she shot her Uber driver.
7:52 She was 48 years old.
7:54 She was taking Uber to an entertainment center; I believe to meet her boyfriend.
8:01 After she shot Garcia, she took a picture of him with her cell phone and sent it to her boyfriend, and I believe when police got there, her boyfriend had already arrived on scene and was helping her out of the vehicle.
8:17 When she got out, she dropped everything she was holding in her hands to the ground, including this handgun that she had.
8:26 Officers said that they looked into the vehicle when they got there, and the victim was bleeding profusely with the wound to the head.
8:33 They were going to the Speaking Rock casino is where Koppa was supposed to be meeting her boyfriend.
8:41 Koppa was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, causing serious bodily injury, which was a second-degree felony, and she was booked into the El Paso County detention facility under a $1 million bond.
8:55 The car that Garcia drove was a gray Nissan Maxima.
9:01 Again, he was found in the Nissan with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
9:07 She was fairly distraught as she exited the car, according to police reports.
9:13 But could you imagine thinking that you are being kidnapped?
9:17 It’s kind of scary if she's asking him to let her out of a car and he won't, and then she discovers the child locks are on.
9:25 And she can't get out, and then he mentions taking her to the fair, which she knows is in Juarez, and she sees signs that say they're going to Juarez and fear just kind of set in.
9:39 You know, I got to thinking about it.
9:40 I don't know what I would do in that situation.
9:42 It's so scary to be put in that situation at the time, like, oh my God, I'm being kidnapped, and you've got a gun in your purse.
9:53 I guess she could have threatened him another way.
9:55 The reality is if you shoot someone in the back of the head and they're driving you, I mean, there's probably going to be an accident because there's no one up there to steer the car or hit the brakes.
10:06 She also in my mind, risked her own life by doing that, even though she felt like her life was already at risk.
10:14 I guess she felt like being harmed from a potential car accident was not as bad as being kidnapped, and who knows what would happen to her at that point.
10:25 But it looks like this murder trial is going to be pushed into early 2025.
10:31 It looks like she acted in self-defense.
10:35 She tried to escape for several minutes before she shot him and pulled the trigger.
10:40 She wanted to get out of the car reportedly.
10:43 She feared for her life, but she is facing life in prison if she is convicted.
10:50 There are no facts proving that she was being kidnapped.
10:55 Of course, because Garcia is no longer with us to give his side of the story, but they're not discussing the evidence in this case at this point.
11:04 Since it's going to trial, it would be a violation of professional rules of conduct.
11:09 But her defense attorneys are saying that she was acting in self-defense.
11:14 Now, Garcia apparently was the breadwinner in his home and worked with Uber to try and make extra money.
11:25 I don't know what his intentions were.
11:28 But it's scary to think how quickly your life can change.
11:32 I think about that a lot, like people who aren't paying attention and are on their cell phone and might hit somebody crossing the street cause they're not paying attention.
11:43 If that happens, I mean, they could kill a child, they could kill an adult, they could injure themselves.
11:51 It's just so scary in the blink of an eye, how quickly your life can change.
11:57 Obviously, everyone's kind of mourning the death of Mr. Garcia and Ms. Koppa apparently has some health problems, and that's another reason I think why her trial has kind of been pushed back because I think she passed out, apparently has congestive heart failure and some other issues that are causing some health related problems, but we really do, when you think about it, put a lot of trust into Our Uber drivers, a lot of trust into total strangers that might be taking us to the airport or taking us to another location.
12:33 I personally don't like taking Ubers by myself.
12:37 It just makes me incredibly nervous to be in a car at the mercy of someone I don't know.
12:42 I do it.
12:43 I do it anyway. And I think we all do, at convenience.
12:47 We take Ubers and Lyft to concerts all the time because we know we might have a drink or two, we don't want to drive home.
12:56 We were talking today about how the price goes up so much when it's in demand, and that's one thing we hate about concerts because the concert's over, you're exhausted.
13:06 The whole countryside is standing outside where you are waiting to get.
13:12 An Uber and it just takes forever, and the prices go up considerably.
13:18 It's crazy, but I did find another story, and it has to do with an Uber driver as well.
13:26 This was the story about the murder of Samantha Josephson and her murder happened back in July of 2021.
13:37 This story was a little bit different because this was a South Carolina man convicted of the 2019 abduction and murder of 20-year-old college student, and she mistook his car for her Uber ride.
13:52 Now the jury took a little more than an hour to find Nathaniel Roland guilty of charges in the death of Samantha Josephson of Robbinsville, New Jersey.
14:02 He was arrested the day after the University of South Carolina student disappeared from the Five Points Entertainment District in March of 2019.
14:13 Josephson was out with her friends, and she got into Roland's car thinking that it was an Uber ride that was going to take her back to her apartment.
14:25 Instead, though, she found herself trapped because again in this situation Roland had the childproof locks on.
14:34 She was never again seen alive.
14:37 She was covered in roughly 120 stab wounds.
14:41 Her body was later found in the woods about 65 miles from where she originally took the Uber ride or the not Uber ride, and her death cast a national spotlight on the safety of people that are hailing these rides and led to some changes.
15:00 One of those is like prominent displays of the license plates.
15:04 Now I personally cannot see, so I have to have my glasses because when my Uber driver's pulling up, I can't see the license plate unless literally I'm right up on it.
15:12 The prosecution spent about 1 week presenting all the evidence.
15:17 They called nearly 3 dozen witnesses, experts linked Josephine's blood to the interior of Roland's Chevy Impala.
15:27 And to the suspected murder weapon, which was a knife with two blades.
15:32 Her blood was also found on cleaning supplies in the trash behind the home of his girlfriend's house at the time, and there was also a sock and a bandanna owned by Roland that was found in that trash.
15:46 Other evidence again cell phone tracking data pinpointed his location the night of the crime.
15:54 And once the DNA collected from Roland's fingernails matched the DNA of Josephson's and also DNA belonging to both Josephson and Roland were found on gloves that were also located in the trash can behind Roland's girlfriend's house.
16:14 Now Roland's defense attorney pointed out that his DNA might not have been on the knife.
16:22 His attorneys also argued that Josephson appeared to fight her attacker and none of his DNA was found on her body.
16:31 He had no visible marks such as bruises or scratch marks or anything, but the defense for Roland did not call witnesses and Roland did not testify.
16:44 Before they rested, Roland's lawyer asked that the charges be thrown out because he said that all the evidence was circumstantial, that there was no evidence that Roland killed Josephine, or that he was the driver of the vehicle when she disappeared.
17:01 Now I know there are many times and events and like I said, when we go to concerts, when you come out and there's a lot of Uber drivers and there's a lot of other drivers sitting there basically waiting for you to just be like to heck with it.
17:13 I don't want to wait on an Uber.
17:15 I'm going to get in there with you.
17:17 Those people have not had background checks and other things, and that's what's scary.
17:24 She thought that he was her Uber driver, though.
17:28 July 2021, Nathaniel Roland was found guilty of the murder of Samantha Josephson, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
17:36 In his appeal again, his attorneys argued that there was not enough evidence, and the appeal was denied.
17:45 Now, Josephson's death led to the creation of Sami's law.
17:50 And Sami's law requires rideshare companies to use enhanced verification systems.
18:01 Samantha Josephson was a senior at the University of South Carolina, and she was at the bird dog bar on Harden Street.
18:12 She did have a boyfriend.
18:13 She kept in touch with him while she was out with her friends for the evening.
18:17 They had made some phone calls and had FaceTime conversation and even some text messages.
18:23 At 2:04, she called her boyfriend to say that she had ordered an Uber to take her home to her apartment.
18:31 He continued to track her on the Find My Friends feature on his iPhone, and he was doing that just to make sure that she got home safe.
18:40 He at that point, continued to try to reach out to her and she did not answer.
18:46 He noticed that her path of travel was the opposite direction that you would go to get from that bar to the apartment complex.
18:58 So he continued to Snapchat, text and try to call her.
19:03 At around 2:30, he noticed that her location had been turned off.
19:09 He initially thought that she had dropped her phone in the Uber car.
19:14 Accidentally left it in there.
19:17 He reached out to her roommates at around 3:30, and then he ultimately fell asleep at around 5 o'clock that morning.
19:26 Now, when her boyfriend, Greg Corbishley woke up at around 11 o'clock on March 29th, he saw messages from the roommates saying that she had never returned home.
19:39 She didn't show up for her morning shift at the tap room where she worked, and her roommates had already notified the police.
19:48 Law enforcement, friends, family began to search for Josephson.
19:52 They initially searched her last known location.
19:56 They visited the bird dog bar where she was last seen with her friends, and where she told her boyfriend that she had left to return home.
20:06 The staff provided video surveillance, and they saw Josephson.
20:11 Thank God for videos, get into a black Chevy Impala.
20:15 Roland was pulled over.
20:18 An officer approached the vehicle, asked for his driver's license.
20:24 The officer smelled marijuana.
20:26 He admitted that he had smoked earlier, and the officer ordered him out of the car and said that he was being stopped because the vehicle met the description of the vehicle that Josephson had gotten into, and before the officer could finish his statement, Roland took off running.
20:44 The officers could see blood stains and footprints on the interior back window of the vehicle.
20:50 There were cleaning supplies also scattered around the vehicle and then her body was discovered at about 2 p.m. on Friday, March 29th by turkey hunters in a remote wooded area in Clarendon County.
21:07 It's such… Such a sad story and like why in the world would he do that?
21:14 Looking into it a little bit, as far as what we know about him, there was a child safety seat located in the backseat of his vehicle, and the child locks were activated.
21:28 There was blood discovered in the trunk and passenger compartment of his vehicle, and that blood was later confirmed to be that of Josephson.
21:38 Roland was apprehended after a foot chase when he got pulled over.
21:43 Now he also had one past felony arrest in South Carolina and that was from October of 2018 for obtaining a signature or property under false pretenses.
21:55 I think a lot of people kind of were caught off guard at the time this happened.
21:59 He was 24 years old.
22:01 He played basketball at East Clarendon High School when he was a student there.
22:05 He was very well liked.
22:07 I think no one really knows why he did this.
22:12 I pulled up his inmate search detail report.
22:18 And it looks like while he's been in prison, he has received multiple disciplinary actions.
22:27 April of this year, he was caught with possession of a narcotic and lost his canteen privileges.
22:36 He was in detention for 20 days.
22:39 He lost telephone, television, and visitation privileges.
22:44 In August of 22, he had an attempt to possess a cell phone, so I'm guessing, I don't know, maybe somebody tried to smuggle it in there.
22:55 And several, it looks like marijuana possessions since he's been in there.
23:01 Yeah, several, and several attempts to possess a cell phone, which they're not supposed to do.
23:08 He does have some earned work credits, and he's been moved a couple of times since he was originally incarcerated.
23:19 Yeah, life in prison.
23:21 So he deserves it, and it's just scary.
23:24 Like I said, background checks weren't done on people who were Uber drivers, but yet this guy was just pretending to be an Uber driver and for some reason he just preyed on her that particular night.
23:41 Samantha was, again, I think I mentioned 1/4-year political science student.
23:47 She was on track to go to Drexel University's law school in 2019.
23:52 On January 5th, Sami's law was signed by President Joe Biden.
23:59 And that bill works to address safety requirements for passengers and drivers.
24:05 This requires background checks for drivers and overseas rider and driver safety precautions implemented by these companies.
24:15 Sami, even though her name was Samantha, stands for Stop, ask, Match, and inform, and that's a way for people to remember the steps of confirming their rideshare vehicle before they enter it.
24:30 So before getting a ride, know what safety features are in the app and know where you're going.
24:37 Ask your driver what your name is to make sure that they are working for the company and that your name has come across their app.
24:46 Match the make and model of the vehicle and the license plate number of the car to the one on the app, and then what's very, very important is share details of your trip with your friends.
25:00 There is a share status function in the rideshare app.
25:05 It's just very important to let people know where you're at.
25:10 Now, I know I've said Uber a lot, but Lyft drivers also, Sami's Law will continue to help legitimize Uber and Lyft drivers by keeping fake drivers off the street.
25:22 It just again provides safety for the passengers using these rideshare apps.
25:28 I love that her family has done something positive out of the bad things that have happened, but again, I mean, ride share is becoming more and more popular.
25:41 Taxis are kind of a thing of the past.
25:44 I mean, we use Uber and Lyft almost daily.
25:47 I mean, not always to get places, but to get food and those types of things.
25:52 So you can see cases where the driver was murdered.
25:57 And we still don't know if those claims were legit or not.
26:02 It makes sense.
26:04 It makes sense that she feared for her life and shot him.
26:09 And then also though, to protect the riders.
26:13 I'm so glad that these things have gone into effect.
26:16 Many states now have to have the lighted signs in the front and the back.
26:19 You have to have a license plate that's visible on the front and the back.
26:25 Most of the time when we go to get into an Uber or a Lyft, the driver says our name and then we know, OK, yeah, they're here to get us, but Anyway, I think it's just very important to be safe, and again, I like to educate a little bit as I'm talking about these stories because the only thing we can do to save a life is good.
26:50 Anyway, I am like literally sitting here surrounded by Christmas gifts that need to be wrapped.
26:57 So, I am going to talk to y'all next week.
27:00 I'm on shift tomorrow, and I think I'm by myself because it's getting closer to the holidays.
27:07 Everyone has to take days off that they're going to lose if they don't take them.
27:11 I think I'm working alone, but that's fine.
27:14 It'll be good.
27:15 Just everybody be good to me.
27:17 We always hope and pray that the county's good to us when we're there by ourselves.
27:21 I can do anything for 12 or 13 hours, so at least it's not for too long.
27:26 I hope that y'all have an amazing week.
27:29 I hope that you get all your Christmas shopping done and that you can do it without strangling someone at the store because it is a madhouse out there.
27:39 I look forward to talking to y'all next week.
27:41 I'll see you later.
27:42 Bye y'all.
27:44 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
27:47 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
27:55 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
27:58 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.