Taxis can be pretty scary when you’re a girl traveling on your own, but this experience took it to a new level.
25-year-old Caroline Burt was filming a live-stream for her Twitch followers in LA, continuing the stream as she got into an Uber, or at least that’s what she thought.
The beauty blogger and TV personality asked the driver, who was parked where her Uber said he was, if he was looking for Caroline, to which he replied yes, so naturally she got in the taxi. It turns out she got into the car of a random man.
Here’s the live feed footage:
Speaking to UNILAD, Caroline explained how the situation came about:
I was streaming on Twitch and I was getting an Uber home to my boyfriend’s.
My Uber was literally parked right next to the car I got into. I asked the man if he was for Caroline and he said yes. So I got in the car, acted as if it was an Uber.
He started asking questions. I thought he was making small talk like some Ubers do. A lot of Ubers ask me about my stream and some do not like being on it so I thought it was normal when he was asking me to turn my stream off.
Caroline was streaming on the video-game live-streaming platform, and she said it is ‘a big deal to your Twitch chat to keep your stream going no matter what’, so she told him she was speaking to her friends.
The Dash Dolls personality then got a call from her Uber driver saying he was looking for her which prompted her to start asking questions about who she was in a car with.
She answered his question asking where she was from saying she’d lived her for six years so he didn’t think she was tourist, and then asked him: ‘Are you an Uber?’
The video shows the driver saying ‘no’ before Caroline panicked saying ‘Oh my god, pull over’.
Talking about her realisation, Caroline said:
I think he was scared because he knew I was recording and he acted accordingly because I also started to try to open the car door while the car was moving and I jumped out.
I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me. All I remember is looking at my Twitch chat and my whole entire chat being like ‘did that really just happen?’
I couldn’t believe it had happened. A random man just let me in his car.
Caroline said she knew ‘he didn’t think [he] was a prostitute or hooker’ because she was ‘wearing jeans, converse and a hoodie’.
She explained how she felt when it was happening:
I think he thought I was an innocent lost tourist he could maybe get it on with. Or maybe he did have good intentions, but I really don’t think so because why else would he be asking me to turn my camera off. It was very scary.
I felt scared. I felt like what was this creep of a man’s intentions picking up a random girl on the Blvd.
I was panicked as soon as he said he wasn’t an Uber driver and my first thought was ‘is this man going to let me out of his car? Am I taken forever?’ I immediately looked for the door handle and lock. I just went into panic mode.
He pulled up as I was waiting for my Uber and I walked up to his car and said are you here for Caroline and he said yes.
Uber was telling me my Uber was arriving right then. It just made sense to me. I was just in shock. I didn’t really know what to think about it.
As keyboard warrior love to do, they misconstrued the video, saying she was a prostitute because of the amount of make-up she was wearing.
In actual fact she does make-up tutorials online for a living and had done her’s because she was live on Twitch.
In response to these horrible accusations, Caroline said:
I was for certain not dressed like a prostitute. I had a fanny pack on with all my Twitch streaming equipment in it which made me look like a tourist.
I had baggy jeans on because I was out doing IRL and need to wear comfortable wear when I do very long streams.
When I walk around in LA people will stop be and be like ‘Are you that chick who almost got kidnapped in an Uber?’ Or I’ll go live and and people will come into my chat and say ‘Isn’t this the girl that got in the wrong Uber?” It’s funny how much of a long lasting impression that had on people.
After the video cut out, Caroline went home to her boyfriend’s house who warned her to be more careful and safe when she does her content.
Pretty scary!
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