MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) - An Uber driver in southern Oregon has been charged with locking a passenger inside his car and raping her, according to police and court records.
Antonio Gonzalez-Salinas, 51, was arraigned Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree rape, kidnapping and sexual abuse, as well as public indecency, records show.
He remained held in Jackson County Jail Thursday on a $1 million bail, according to jail records. It wasn’t immediately known if he has a lawyer.
An Uber spokesman told The Oreogonian/OregonLive in an email that the company is cooperating with law enforcement to support their investigation.
The company reported 3,045 sexual assaults during its rides in the United States in 2018, according to a study.
Police said Gonzalez-Salinas picked the woman up early Sunday in downtown Medford after she had been out drinking with friends.
The driver was supposed to take the woman, 21, to the house of an acquaintance, according to Medford police.
The woman’s friends called her phone when she didn’t arrive and Gonzalez-Salinas answered, saying he was having trouble finding the house, said Lt. Mike Budreau, a police spokesman.
Subsequent calls to the woman’s phone went unanswered, prompting her friends and a relative to search for her using the phone’s location data, Budreau said.
They found the woman crying inside Gonzalez-Salinas’ car a few blocks from her acquaintance’s house, police said.
Gonzalez-Salinas was arrested at his home.
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