Woman Fatally Shot Uber Driver She Thought Was Kidnapping Her

A Kentucky woman has been accused of fatally shooting her West Texas Uber driver after mistakenly believing she was being kidnapped and taken to Mexico, according to police.

Daniel Piedra was shot many times in the head three weeks into his new employment as an Uber driver in El Paso, according to police, because his client felt she was being abducted and taken to another country after seeing a traffic sign that read “Juarez, Mexico” in error.

Since the shooting on June 16, Piedra, 52, had been kept alive by a Texas hospital. But Piedra’s loved ones, who had been hoping for a miracle, decided to let him go when the doctors told him he would have to be kept on a ventilator permanently.

“My aunt didn’t want to see him suffer,” Didi Lopez, Piedra’s niece, told The Washington Post. “But, honestly, we don’t think that we decided to disconnect him. That decision was made for him the second that those bullets went into his head.”

On Thursday, Phoebe Copas, 48, of Tompkinsville, Kentucky, was accused of murder. When she was detained on June 16, aggravated assault was the charge; however, after Piedra’s passing, the accusation was modified. According to jail records, her bond was also raised from $1 million to $1.5 million.

A request for a remark was not immediately answered by an attorney assigned to Copas. Her Friday bond hearing has been postponed. No new hearing time has been scheduled.

According to a criminal complaint, on June 16, Copas scheduled an Uber ride to a casino where she intended to meet her boyfriend after he arrived home from work. According to police, Piedra picked up Copas in his gray Nissan Maxima at around 2:00 p.m.

Copas, who was riding in the rear seat, allegedly spotted a sign while the driver was operating the vehicle that said Juarez, a city in Mexico that is roughly seven miles south of El Paso. Investigators said that the passenger was concerned about being kidnapped because of the sign along US 54.

Copas allegedly pulled a “silver and brown handgun” from her purse and began shooting the driver repeatedly. Before coming to a stop on the highway, the car ran through obstacles. Copas did not try to call the police before opening fire and did not immediately call them after, authorities say. Court documents allege that she took photos of Piedra after the shooting and texted them to her boyfriend, before calling 911.

When authorities arrived around 2:20 pm, they found Copas’s boyfriend helping her out of the crushed Nissan, court documents state. When she got out, officers saw her “drop everything she was holding in her hands on the ground,” including the gun, according to the complaint.

Officers then called an ambulance for Piedra, who was slumped over in the driver’s seat with gunshot wounds to his head.

Investigators said Piedra never deviated from the assigned route, one they described as “a normal route to drive to the destination requested by” Copas. That area, they added, is “not in close proximity of a bridge, port of entry or another area with immediate access to travel into Mexico”.

Piedra’s family is questioning why a ride that followed a planned route would end in bloodshed.

Vigils for Piedra were conducted on both sides of the border on Friday. In both instances, family members and neighbors held candles as they shared memories and thought back on what Piedra’s cousin described as “unimaginable tragedy, pain, and violence.”

In Spanish, he remarked, “In some way, we’ll come to accept the will of God, who mysteriously does things,” as loud cries erupted behind him.