An Uber driver in Sacramento says he’s lucky he didn’t crash after a drunk passenger tried to grab his steering wheel.
They ended up wrestling for control of the car while driving 65-miles-an-hour on Interstate-80.
The entire incident was caught on a dashcam.
“Hi, are you Albert? Are you Sonseeahray? All right, come on in. I think I’ll get in the back. Ok, sounds good.”
That’s how most Uber rides start and they finish just as cordially but three-year-veteran of the streets, Albert Castro, says what a passenger did in his car after a pick-up Saturday wasn’t anything close to cordial – it was crazy!
“He goes ‘oh, you’re gonna crash.’ No, I’m not gonna crash,” Castro says. “And he says ‘no, no you’re gonna crash’ and he laughs and then drifts away and then two seconds later he pops back up and grabs the wheel and we fly across two lanes of traffic.”
Castro, known to his friends as Dax, captured that chaotic moment on his dash cam.
Smacking his drunk rider’s hand down, while they were going 65 near the southbound Fulton exit on Business-80, he thought he had the situation under control.
His passenger had other plans, putting them frighteningly into action as the car they were in reached the Highway 50-99 Interchange.
“He goes ‘I love you brother’ and he lunges for the wheel and grabs and pulls it,” Castro says. “And it was literally every ounce of strength I had to keep us from, I still don’t know how we didn’t crash.”
Castro was in such a battle for control of his car, he hoped others would see his hazards on – and stopped his car in the number two lane of Business-80, trying to keep anyone from getting hurt.
Tswj Vang is the passenger CHP officers say is facing DUI charges for violently trying to take control of Castro’s car after requesting him as an Uber at the Corner Pocket Sports Bar in Citrus Heights.
Video on Vang’s public Facebook page shows the 32-year-old partying inside a bar an hour before investigators say he made that second grab at the wheel.
He also posted a Facebook Live from inside Castro’s car about 20 minutes before his arrest.
Pushing past the fear, Castro can’t believe just how close his passenger came to taking the life he’s built with now eight kids and a wife he cherishes.
“I got even more angry at the other guy because taking away that from me, she’s my everything,” Castro says.
The driver says he’s been told the suspect is now banned from using the Uber app.