John Jefferson
Left to right: Christopher Hayes, Jesse Alan Lawson (Oklahoma County Detention Center).
Two men flagged down a Lyft driver and offered to pay for a ride but instead held a gun to his head and ordered him to drive around before dawn on Sunday in Oklahoma before the assailants were dropped off and arrested nearby, authorities said.
Jesse Alan Lawson, 26, and Christopher Hayes, 27, face charges of kidnapping and robbery and weapons violations, online jail booking records show.
The incident happened on Sunday when police said the suspects flagged down the driver near a nightclub in Oklahoma City’s business district known as Bricktown, according to a police report obtained by Law&Crime.
When the suspects asked for a ride, the driver told them to use the Lyft app to request one, the report said. But the suspects told the driver they had cash and would pay for a ride. The driver told them he’d take cash if their destination was nearby, and the suspects got in the car, one in the back passenger seat, the other in the front passenger seat, the report said.
One of the suspects “got into the car with a bag of beer,” the police report noted.
Shortly after getting in, the back seat passenger passed a handgun to the front seat passenger, who pressed the pistol to the driver’s head and said, “Now listen to daddy if you want to see your family again do what you are told,” according to the police report.
The suspects then demanded the driver take them to Durant, about 150 miles south of Oklahoma City, a destination the driver said he could not drive to, the report said.
They drove for a long time, holding the gun to his head, making threats and trying to get into his phone, the driver later told police, according to the report.
Eventually, the suspects decided they wanted to be dropped off at a club in Oklahoma City, according to the document. When they arrived, the suspects demanded the driver’s cellphone and $20 in cash and got out of the car, the report said.
The Lyft driver called police from a 7-Eleven, and officers found the suspects and arrested them near where they were dropped off, police said in the report.
The driver told police he was scared because the men threatened to find him and his family and kill them if he called the police, the report said.
Lyft said in a statement emailed to Law&Crime that based on the information available, it believes the incident did not take place on the Lyft platform.
“We take safety matters extremely seriously and were deeply concerned to hear about this incident,” the statement said. “We encourage drivers to report safety concerns in the Lyft app.”
The men were being held at the Oklahoma County Jail.
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