A Texas man in El Paso died days after being shot by his Uber passenger, who claimed to have incorrectly assumed she was being kidnapped and taken to Mexico.
Daniel Piedra, 52, had been on life support after being shot multiple times in the back of the head on 16 June. Doctors said he would never be able to come off life support, and his family made the decision to pull him off it on Wednesday, when he died.
“It’s devastating, and it has wrecked us so much,” Didi Lopez, Piedra’s niece, told the local news outlet WBKO . “It’s something that shouldn’t have happened.”
Of her uncle being taken off life support, Lopez said to the Washington Post: “My aunt didn’t want to see him suffer. But, honestly, we don’t think that we made the decision to disconnect him. That decision was made for him the second that those bullets went into his head.”
Phoebe Copas, a Kentucky woman, is being held in the El Paso county jail on a count of murder in connection with Piedra’s slaying. She booked a ride on 16 June to a casino in the El Paso Mission area.
She allegedly saw a road sign for the Mexican city of Juárez during the ride, believed she was being kidnapped, and shot Piedra, according to the El Paso Times. “The investigation does not support that a kidnapping took place or that Piedra was veering from Copas’ destination,” El Paso police said in a statement. The incident also did not take place near a bridge or any port of entry to Mexico, authorities said.
A criminal affidavit obtained by KTSM, a local news station, alleges that Copas did not call for help when she believed she was being kidnapped or after she shot Piedra. She allegedly took a photo of Piedra and sent it to her boyfriend, KTSM reported. She is being held on a $1.5m bond.
Copas’s arrest and Piedra’s killing come amid a spate of shootings across the US this year which have victimized Americans who were engaged in ordinary activities. The violence has cast a light on how the country is flooded with guns and raised even more scrutiny over America’s lax firearms laws and permissive self-defense statutes.
Piedra had been driving for Uber for about three weeks before he was killed, the Post reported. He had been a mechanic but began driving after a knee injury. He loved his job, his niece told the Washington Post, especially getting to meet new people. One of his passengers even came to visit him in the hospital.
“He was a hardworking man and really funny,” his niece told the El Paso Times. “He was never in a bad mood. He was always the one that if he saw you in a bad mood, he’d come over and try to lift you up and always was making us laugh. Such a funny, caring and hardworking man.”
Piedra’s family started a GoFundMe campaign earlier this month to raise money for hospital and funeral expenses had raised about $70,000 as of Monday morning.
