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An Uber driver who allegedly trapped a lesbian passenger for more than an hour has escaped a jail conviction.
Umar Subi Gammeda, 46, was a driver in the northern Australian city of Brisbane. He picked up the woman in August last year for the fateful trip.
It was supposed to be a short 10 minute car trip, but allegedly ended up a long ordeal for the woman. During the ordeal she was forced to answer questions about her sexuality.
Rather than dropping her off at the bar she was going to, Subi Gammeda allegedly drove around Brisbane in a ‘concerning manner’.
Cultural differences
On the car trip, Subi Gammeda asked the 25-year-old woman if she was married. It was at that point she told him that she was a lesbian.
Subi Gammeda told the woman homosexuality was frowned upon in his home country, Ethiopia.
He then proceeded to ask her how she had sex with her girlfriend. Those questions earned him a charge of public nuisance.
Subi Gammeda was also charged with deprivation of liberty. Prosecutors dropped the deprivation of liberty charge due to a lack of evidence.
He pleaded not guilty to both charges. But the Brisbane Magistrate’s Court fined him AU$300 (US$226) for public nuisance.
‘He fully accepts that it’s offensive here and he shouldn’t have said it,’ his defence barrister Debra Wardle according to the Brisbane Times.
‘This offence really boils down to cultural differences and not understanding, and he apologises for the offence that he has caused.’
Wardle said Subi Gammeda planned to return to work as an Uber driver. He couldn’t find work for six months after the incident and recently got a job as a labourer on a chicken farm.
