Benita «bi-Bi» diamond was 12 years old. Her life was cut short night in January 2019: the girl ordered Uber, rode it 20 miles to the Parking lot in Orlando and dumped from the roof of 9-storey building fell to his death.
Now the parents of Benita, lisha Chen and Ronald diamond, threatening the company with a lawsuit and require that all taxi services has implemented strict rules forbidding drivers to take as passengers unaccompanied minors.
Together with her lawyer, Laura Douglas, lisha and Ronald held a press conference in Orlando, lake Nona, to encourage the public to take decisive action.
«For anybody not a secret that children bad things happen when they are without the permission of the parents get in cars with strangers,» — said Douglas.
According to diamond and Chen, on the night of 10 January, Benita waited until the mother falls asleep, and loaded it onto her phone app Uber. After that, the girl logged into a previously created account, and called a taxi. She told the driver to take her to a vacant lot in lake Nona, and used the gift card bought at Christmas to pay for the trip.
According to the rules of Uber, the customer «must be at least 18 years of age to be eligible to have a profile and use the services of the application». Any passenger under 18 must be accompanied by another person age 18 or older. The driver, in turn, is obliged to refuse an underage customer in the trip and has the right to demand ID if you suspect that he does not meet the requirements of the service.
Nevertheless, said the lawyer, the taxi driver took the girl to the center of Orlando to City Commons Parking Garage without even asking how old she is or where her parents are. According to Chen, after the incident, she found out that the man did not know English.
According to the girl’s father, she left a letter in which Benita was told how easy it was to order a taxi, and confessed that she expected to have «more to try». The girl told the parents that sent in the center of the city, adding that «reached the point of no return.»
«To the point of no return my daughter took Uber, says Ronald diamond more one’s fault, no.»
Parents believe: if the driver just refused to go anywhere to take their daughter, they would have won a little time, managed to notice that something is wrong — and possibly save Benita. Although it’s been 6 months since her death, the diamond and Chen still do not know what made them incredibly gifted child who studied well and skillfully played the piano, a suicide.
The couple stresses that they are not interested in compensation: lisha Ronald demanding change that will not allow such tragedies to happen again.
«It will happen again with any child or a teenager, if I do nothing, says Chen — if you are not convinced that Uber, Lyft and everyone else will improve their policies. Of course, the rules already exist, but what they are worth, if they don’t follow?»
A representative of Uber said that the service had not received any complaints about the incident during the past six months. However, I assure the company, they are now investigating the incident.
