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Published Oct 12, 2018 at 10:45 AM EDT Updated Oct 12, 2018 at 11:31 AM EDT. Robert Ortiz (left) had his Lyft account permanently disabled after a video of him berating driver Shawn Pepas...
Oct 14, 2018 · In a PIX11 exclusive, 33-year-old Robert Ortiz spoke about his now-viral rant in the back of a Lyft that’s led to countless threats and hate messages. In the video, Ortiz accuses driver...
- Katie Corrado
Oct 15, 2018 · In a PIX11 exclusive, 33-year-old Robert Ortiz spoke about his now-viral rantin the back of a Lyft that's led to countless threats and hate messages. In the video, Ortiz accuses driver...
- 5 min
- “I Feel Racially Profiled”
- Threatening Talk
- Against The Law
- Open Insults
- Video Part 1
- Calling Police
- Turn For The Worse
- Taking Sides
- No Job
- Video Part 2
Whether Ortiz was having a bad night or not was anyone’s guess, although it very much seemed that way. After arguing with his driver about the style of the music playing in the car, the disgruntled passenger made a call to Lyft, telling the dispatcher: “I feel racially profiled … because I’m not black.” But the driver refused to change the music an...
At one point, the three men in the back, who all happened to be gay, asked the driver if he was refusing to change the music because of their sexual orientation. “He knows he’s f**ked up,” one of the passengers said about Lettman. But matters descended even further when the driver started recording what was going on in the back of his car.
What follows is a tirade of epithets against the driver and a complaint that the man is, as the belligerent passenger puts it, “recording him without his permission.” He even references New York State Law. Meanwhile, Lettman watches on stoically as Ortiz contacts the police and states that he is “fearful for his life.”
As the video continues, Ortiz continues to lob threats and open insults at the beleaguered driver. “I’m gonna make sure while you’re recording this that you never have a job as a Lyft driver ever again,” Ortiz told him, threatening, “I’m going to make sure that you never have a job as a f**king driver again. You piece of s**t.”
The argument was a strange one in the first place as Ortiz claimed that the driver was refusing to change the music because he wasn’t black.
Not satisfied with the answers he was getting from the driver, Ortiz hung up the call with Lyft and decided instead to dial 911. He told Lettman that he intended to wait for the police to arrive and would not be paying for his fare. “I’m telling you that I called the police to protect myself because I know my legal rights as an American citizen,” h...
After about 10 minutes of arguing and name calling, matters took a serious turn for the worse when Ortiz started using the N-word against the black driver. At one point, Ortiz called a friend on Facetime, saying: “Tell me why I’m in a Lyft, and the n***a f***ing pulled over … We’re waiting for the police because this f****t charged me,” he said.
Lyft did what they had to do by initiating an investigation into the incident. At the time, they deactivated both the Lyft accounts of Ortiz and Lettman until they had carried out a full review. Having reached their conclusions, Lyft sided with their driver, reactivating his account and deleting Ortiz’s account forever. But a story like this was bo...
Ortiz then begins to threaten the driver even more by claiming that he will “Make sure that you never have a job as a driver again.” Ortiz continues to use race and sexual orientation as weapons in his argument arsenal. He also threatens litigation against the driver for the $8.01 he is now out of as a result of the asinine situation.
After about 10 minutes of arguing and name calling, matters took a serious turn for the worse when he got on the phone with Lyft customer service. He told the dispatcher on the end of the line, “I came out of a gay club, and your driver is racist against gay people.” Ortiz got racism and sexism mixed up in his head, and that of course only confuses...
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Oct 15, 2018 · THE BRONX, N.Y. -- (WPIX) -- In a PIX11 exclusive, 33-year-old Robert Ortiz spoke about his now-viral rant in the back of a Lyft that's led to countless threats and hate messages. In the video, Ortiz accuses driver Shawn Lettman of discrimination and threatens to have him fired.
