A rideshare driver may have saved his own life by swerving across lanes at high speed on the Capital Beltway, trying to shake off a passenger who was stabbing him with a steak knife.
"I couldn’t believe this was happening," said the driver, whose name we are not sharing.
He said he picked up a passenger in a residential area of Rockville, Maryland, just after 2 a.m. Friday. He says once they started driving, the situation quickly got strange. The man asked him if he could help change a tire, and then asked him to stop the car so he could relieve himself.
As they got onto the Beltway heading to Silver Spring, the driver said he watched in the rearview mirror as the passenger pulled something out of a bag. It was a steak knife.
We've got the news you need to know to start your day. Sign up for the First & 4Most morning newsletter — delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.
"All I'm seeing is this, I mean, lunatic, coming after me with a knife. Every time he swings, I'm just like, 'Where is that knife going to land?'" the victim said.
The wounds of the driver — a fit 32-year-old who has boxed, wrestled and done combat sports since childhood — show how he fought for his life.
"Stay alive," he said. "Stay alive. That's it."
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
He described trying to shake the man off him by driving erratically across the Beltway.
"I started driving crazy so he wasn't really stable in the back seat," he said. "So he kept falling from side to side. And I was just trying to buy myself enough time to stop."
The driver managed to stop on the Beltway and pulled the man out of the car. Another driver, whom he later learned is a security officer, stopped to help.
The security guard used a stun gun on the passenger. Minutes later, officers arrived and arrested the suspect, identified in Maryland State Police charging documents as Rengga Pratama, a 38-year-old Rockville resident.
The driver was stabbed seven times, according to the charging documents. He was taken to a hospital. Days later, he is still in pain, and in shock. He had planned to drive only for another couple of weeks, as he prepares to start his own tech company. Sadly, it’s not the first traumatic incident he’s had while driving rideshare.
"I got carjacked before, years ago, and I thought something like this would never happen again," he said.
Pratama is charged with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
