WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) -
An Uber driver convicted of raping an intoxicated woman he picked up at a casino near Philadelphia was sentenced Tuesday to seven to 20 years in prison.
Common Pleas Judge Patrick Carmody called the crime for which 27-year-old Ahmed Elgaafary was sentenced Tuesday “just a horrible, horrible abuse of the public trust,” The Daily Local News of West Chester reported.
“We tell our kids, ‘Don’t drive drunk, take an Uber.’ But if you read about this, it shocks the conscience,” Carmody said, telling Elgaafary that he had “acted as a predator.”
Elgaafary, 27, of Lansdale, was convicted in August of rape of an unconscious person, sexual assault, and indecent assault. On the stand, he acknowledged having had sex with the woman but maintained that there was no evidence that he forced himself on her.
“I just want to apologize to the young lady,” Elgaafary said in a brief statement before sentencing. “I just want to say I am sorry.”
Chester County prosecutors said Elgaafary picked up the woman at Valley Forge Casino Resort in February but then assaulted her in the back seat, stretching the 15-minute ride to 53 minutes - and then charging her for the longer ride and for vomiting in his car, adding an extra $150.
The woman gave a detailed account of the trauma she said she suffered after the attack, which she said included flashbacks and panic attacks as well as a sense of wanting to shut herself off from her otherwise happy world of family and friends
“I never thought I would wake up to a real-life nightmare,” she said of the morning after the ride home. “You never think anything like this would happen to you.”
Prosecutors, who sought a term of eight to 16 years, have said Elgaafary will likely be deported to Egypt, where he is a citizen, following his sentence. Defense attorney John McMahon Jr. cited that and his client’s lack of a criminal record in arguing for no more than five to 15 years, saying Elgaafary would be “banished, in so many words.”
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