Didi Passenger’s Tragic Rape and Murder Could Have Been Avoided

A ride-sharing passenger in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province was just recently raped and killed allegedly by a driver working for the country's largest ride-hailing firm, local police said on Saturday. This incident marks the latest violent crime to fuel safety concerns about the service.

Yueqing police forces quickly solved the case:

At 5:35 PM on Friday August 24, Yueqing police received a report from Mr. Zhao that his 20-year-old daughter named Zhao had gotten into a Didi carpool vehicle a few hours earlier at 1 PM and sent a message to a friend around 2 PM seeking help before losing contact.

After receiving the alert, Yueqing police took matters seriously and immediately dispatched teams to search for the young girl and her driver. With the full support of the higher-level public security department, they arrested the 27-year-old Sichuanese suspect in the town of Liushi at 4 AM on Saturday, August 25.

After a preliminary investigation, the Didi driver surnamed Zhong confessed to his crime of raping and killing Ms. Zhao. Her body has been recovered, and the case is still under investigation.

Photo of the young girl Ms. Zhao, 160cm tall. According to her parents, she left Hongqiao for Yongjia and sent a message seeking help shortly after around 2 PM, but tragically lost contact with her parents quickly. Panicked and concerned, her parents began spreading word of their daughter’s disappearance and left their phone number for anyone to call in case they knew of anything :13******

At 1 PM on Friday August 24, the girl got in the car from Feihong South Road in Wenzhou and was expected to arrive at her destination around 2:40 PM. Unfortunately, Ms. Zhao never made it.

One of her WeChat friends received a message from Ms. Zhao at 2:10 PM: "The car is driving up a remote mountain and I don’t see any other cars around. I'm scared." At around 2:15 PM, another friend of Ms. Zhao’s received an even more chilling text message: "Help me!"

Soon after, relatives and friends attempted to contact Ms. Zhao but found that her mobile phone had been turned off.

This was a rather abnormal situation and reacted quickly by reaching out to Didi around 3:40 PM which eventually called the police to intervene in this affair. The family was told they would have to wait for an hour before related persons could be dispatched, but that one hour turned into a very stressful 2-hour-long wait. Around 5:40 PM, Didi called back to inform them that the driver had been contacted and confirmed that Ms. Zhao did not get into his car.

Unable to get the answers they needed from Didi, her family and friends turned to the police at 6 PM to report her missing case.

By the end of Friday afternoon, Didi had communicated the driver’s personal information and license number to the Yueqing police station. It wasn’t long before they were able to track the driver down.

The suspect threw Ms. Zhao from the top of the mountain to her tragic death at the bottom.

Rescuers and civilian police officers made their way down to the bottom of the mountain to identify and confirm the victim’s body was in fact Ms. Zhao’s. Her left hand was injured and full of blood, feet tied together with clothing strips, jeans and other underwear intact.

Rescue squads were dispatched around the city until about 6 AM the following morning when the suspect was finally apprehended. Police said they found the suspect, a 27-year-old driver called Zhong. They said Zhong confessed to raping and killing the passenger.

Regrettably, this isn’t the first time that such an incident involving a Didi driver has been reported. A few months ago on May 10, a young flight attendant was killed after getting into a car serviced by the Chinese ride-hailing company.

Following this devastating news, the Zhejiang Transportation Management department instructed that Didi immediately stops running their operations in Zhejiang province.

The province of Zhejiang suspended the service across the entire territory to force the company to address its safety concerns and suggested that Didi may need further reforms to protect its passengers. So far, the company has tried solutions for its Hitch carpooling service that included restricting late-night rides, limiting access to sensitive information, making its emergency information more accessible, and limiting rides to same-sex drivers.

On 26th, Didi announced that it will take further reforms on Didi carpooling service nationwide from 0:00 on August 27th and has removed two executives. Didi has removed Huang Jieli as Hitch’s general manager and Huang Jinhong as vice president for customer services, according to the statement.

---

What did Didi do about it?

However, Didi’s customer service team refused to provide the license number so as to protect their user's privacy, and ultimately began shirking any responsibility in this matter.

One hour passed, and Ms. Zhao’s family and friends could do nothing but wait while she was being brutally tortured somewhere in the mountains. In the meantime, Didi’s customer service promised that they would arrange officers or safety experts to contact Ms. Zhao’s family who waited in vain for an update.

Didi’s customer service said that Ms. Zhao's parents should let the police contact them first and that they would be willing to communicate the driver's information. So Ms. Zhao's parents asked them directly how they could contact the Didi platform. 

However, Didi’s customer service made an excuse about being busy and quickly terminated their conversation in a short minute.

The police station said that without the license number, they can’t file a case. Didi said that without filing a case, they can’t provide the license number.

While Ms. Zhao was in desperate need for help and rescue, one company was busy protecting their users’ privacy while the other refused to move forward with the missing case without the license number required from Didi.

The real problem here is the obligation to follow the “rules”!

Didi’s customer service is not wrong. She is a good employee who strictly followed the company rules. Didi is a ride-sharing platform. It provides greater convenience for car services. Passengers and drivers are its users. Didi has the obligation and responsibility to protect users' privacy. China is a large market with hundreds of millions of users, and consequently thousands of fraudsters try to swindle all kinds of user privacy from Didi on a daily basis. Therefore, it stipulates that their employees need to strictly protect the privacy of all its users unless otherwise requested by the police.

On the other hand, police officers were only doing their job by requesting such information from Didi and following local police regulations. Every day, police officers are presented with tons of false reports. In order to solve the case more effectively, they require such license numbers to be used as clues for such cases so that they can be investigated more quickly and effectively.

Sadly, their refusal to bend the rules eventually led to the death of an innocent young girl who could have possibly been rescued if everyone had been willing to act promptly.

If the customer service staff breaks the rules, risking the dismissal of the company, proactively alerting and first providing the police with all useful information such as license plates, mobile phone location and other information, perhaps Ms. Zhao would still be alive today.

If police officers had broken their rules and risked disciplinary action by immediately filing a case and forcing the company to provide the driver's license plate and mobile phone location, chances are they would have come out of this as heroes for saving the young girl’s life.

After hearing of such tragic news, we can only blame them for not doing whatever was necessary to come to Ms. Zhao’s help on time.

In addition to using the power of public opinion to force them to find solutions to such problems, we must also come together to find ways to prevent the occurrence of similar events in the future! We’re open to any suggestions for this matter!

Can a one-button emergency help function be designed to send the driver's license plate number, photo, ID number, and mobile phone location directly to the police whenever a user’s safety is at risk and report the case immediately?

Is it possible to set up a condition that forces Didi to arrange a person immediately after the user has activated the emergency help button, and to mobilize surrounding drivers to help search for the driver and the car that have been reported as suspicious?

We need everyone’s ideas and support to address this matter! At this point, with your help, we can only hope that the next victim isn’t someone we personally know, love, and care for.

Source: 人民日报

Supervisor: Crystal Huang

Editor: SC

Co-Editor: Ed Bellin

What is your opinion? 

Don't forget to share this article with friends by pressing "..." in the top right corner.

Advertisement 

Editor's Pick