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NEW YORK — A passenger pummeled his Lyft driver in New York City Thursday evening, May 23, and the entire assault was caught by a dash camera.
Driver Eduardo Madiedo told WPIX he had just one thing on his mind as he was beaten.
“I was just trying to pull over and stop the car and get them out of my vehicle without hurting someone else or hitting someone else or a pedestrian,” he said.
Madiedo managed to do just that, but not without suffering one final insult and attack.
“I was just looking to make sure he left and I guess he saw me looking and turned around,” he said. “He called me a bunch of racial slurs -- a Mexican and, 'Go back to my country,' and since my window was open, he swung at me again.”
It all happened at the end of a strange ride where he picked up a mother and her adult son around 6 p.m. to go to Mount Saint Hospital in Queens. The son was clearly in some sort of distress, laying on his mother’s lap and moaning.
Madiedo said he was so focused on the road, he missed the red flag of the son pulling off his jacket revealing no shirt underneath. When traffic outside got bad, things inside the car got a lot worse.
“He was being vulgar with me and cursing at me,” Madiedo said.
Video showed the moment the violent assault began.
“Excuse me, man. If you’re going to be disrespectful, I’ll just pull over right now," Madiedo said in the video.
Without warning, a fist slammed into the side of Madiedo's skull, followed by a flurry of punches.
Madiedo, who’s been a rideshare driver for three years, said he got the camera not to try and capture wrongdoing, but to discourage it. After this, he said he wasn't sure whether he'd ever drive for Lyft again.
Lyft officials said they were cooperating with the NYPD and booted the mother of the suspect off the app.