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Fort Lauderdale Man Accused of Posing as Uber Driver, Sexually Battering Woman

A Fort Lauderdale man was arrested Sunday after police said he posed as an Uber driver and sexually battered a woman who got into his car.

The suspect, 37-year-old Shapsly Silencieux, allegedly picked up a woman along the 100 block of Southwest 3rd Avenue on Saturday night.

The woman, who been out with friends that night, got separated from them and requested an Uber to take her back to where she was staying in Bal Harbour, according to an arrest report released by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

When the woman received the alert that her car had arrived, she approached a white vehicle and asked Silencieux if he was her driver, to which he replied, “yes,” the report said.

After a few minutes, the woman received a cancellation notification from her Uber app and a $100 charge. Confused, the woman told Silencieux he was not her Uber driver to which he replied “I’m driving you home,” the report stated.

Silencieux then drove the woman to his apartment, under the pretense of going to retrieve his wallet, where he reportedly attacked and sexually assaulted her, the report said.

He then drove her to back to where she was staying in Bal Harbour where she was able to call the police give them the license plate number from memory of the car Silencieux was driving, the report said. Police later located him at his apartment where he was taken into custody.

Bal Harbour police then took the woman to the Fort Lauderdale police department where she picked Silencieux out of a lineup.

Silencieux was booked into jail where he remained held on $50,000 bond Monday, records showed. Attorney information wasn’t available.

In a recent report released by Uber, almost 6,000 allegations of sexual assault were recorded between 2017 and 2018.

Along with Lyft, the companies recently announced the swapping of information on drivers accused of sexual assault in order to improve safety.

“We want to share this information with each other and hopefully in the future with other companies so that our peers in this space can be informed and make decisions for their own platforms to keep those platforms safe,” Lyft said in a statement.

“Everyone has the right to travel safely and our thoughts are with the victim,” a statement from Uber said. “While this trip did not take place on the Uber app, we immediately removed the driver’s access to the app as soon as this was reported to us.”

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