UP YOURS, HQ: Elderly Uber Driver Broke Company Gun Policy To Stop Choking Attack

By Bob Owens

San Francisco-based ride-sharing service Uber recently told drivers and customers they would not be allowed to be armed for their own self-defense.

A 74-year-old Uber driver in Clearwater, Florida is alive tonight because he, like virtually everyone else, ignored Uber’s hysterical cries.

A 60-year-old man was shot in the foot Sunday night during a fight with an Uber driver, police said.

The shooting occurred in the 400 block of Mandalay Avenue when Uber driver Steven Rayow, 74, stopped to pick up passenger Marc Gregory Mermel about 10 p.m.

Mermel and Rayow began arguing and then started fighting each other, with Mermel choking the driver at one point, Clearwater police said.

Rayow, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun from his waist. As the fight continued, the gun went off, hitting Mermel’s foot. He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa.

This appears to be what prosecutors call “imperfect self-defense,” in which the geriatric driver may have taken steps to escalate the confrontation, but didn’t start the physical force attack, and was clearly justified in using the gun to save his life.

If these early accounts are accurate, Uber driver Steven Rayow could have been seriously injured or killed if he’d followed the …read more

Source:: Bearing Arms