Uber Driver Says Passenger Mistook Him For A Muslim, Threatened To Kill Him

Samson Woldemichael is a Christian. But the 40-year-old Ethiopian immigrant and father of two, who works as an Uber driver in North Carolina, says he was the victim of Islamophobia this weekend when a passenger threatened his life before violently attacking him during a late-night fare.

Woldemichael says he picked up his assailant, a white man in his 30s, a little before 2 a.m. Sunday outside an Irish pub in Charlotte. The ride started out normally enough, with the two men making small talk. But Woldemichael says when he arrived at what the passenger gave as his home address, the man started to threaten him.

“He told me he was going to shoot me right in face or strangle me,” Woldemichael told The Huffington Post. “He used a lot of bad words… really dirty words, and said I was a Muslim.”

Woldemichael says that even after he told the man he wasn’t a Muslim, the man continued to threaten him. “He was telling me he was going to kill me right there, next to his residence.”

At that point, Woldemichael says, he asked the passenger to get out of the car. The passenger, in turn, asked Woldemichael to get out. Woldemichael says the two stared into each other’s eyes for a few tense seconds, and then he decided to start driving again.

“I started driving because I didn’t feel safe anymore to park there,” he told WBTV this week.

Woldemichael says he drove halfway around the block before the passenger “hit me so hard on the forehead with his bare hand.”

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