A 26-year-old rideshare driver bailed out of her vehicle at 60 mph on a Georgia highway after being kidnapped at knifepoint and assaulted by a truck driver whose rig broke down, according to reports.
“I took my seat belt off and grabbed my phone and in that second that’s when I opened the door and jumped,” Carolina Vargas said, according to WTVF.
“I just remember feeling a ball of fire where the tire drove over me,” said Vargas, who lost several teeth and suffered facial and leg injuries in the horrific ordeal.
Vargas, who drives for a rideshare company in Nashville, said the trucker — identified as Christopher Miller — hired her on May 5 to take him to Cleveland, Tennessee, after his vehicle broke down.
That trip was uneventful, she said, but things took a horrible turn after Miller called her again three days later and asked her to drive him back to Nashville.
At one point, he told her he knew a faster route to avoid traffic, according to WKRN. He then suddenly pulled out a knife, Vargas said.
“I didn’t do anything to trigger him and he put the knife here in my side and said, ‘Now you are going to do what I say,’” she said.
Vargas begged the man to let her go, but quickly realized that she had no choice but to jump from the speeding Ford Explorer.
“I didn’t break one bone. And I’m so grateful just to be alive. I couldn’t believe everything was so fast,” she said.
A Good Samaritan stopped to help Vargas, who was bleeding heavily on the road, and called the cops.
She was taken to Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Georgia, where she was treated and eventually released, WKRN reported.
Vargas, who often takes photos of her fares, provided one she took of her assailant to investigators, who also obtained the driver’s license photo he had used during his hotel stay, according to WTVF.
Using his cell phone’s GPS, police tracked Miller down to a motel in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was arrested Monday.
He faces charges of aggravated assault, hijacking a motor vehicle and weapons possession, Greg Fowler, chief of the Cohutta Police Department in Georgia, told The Post.
Once extradited from Florida, he may be charged with other crimes, said Fowler, who added that investigators “only have one side of the story” for now.
Media reports have said Vargas was driving for Uber, but the company told The Post on Tuesday that her trips did not involve its app.