What made a Lyft driver kick a Maryland man and his friends out of the back seat of an SUV, before the man was struck and killed on a dark stretch of Route 1 Coastal Highway on Delaware’s Eastern Shore?
A wrongful death lawsuit filed in Delaware Superior Court by the family of 43-year-old Sidney Wolf of Clarksburg, Maryland, provides an account of what happened in the Lyft before Wolf — an ex-adviser to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — and five friends were ordered out of the vehicle, during a trip from Dewey Beach to Bethany Beach.
According to the suit, at about 1:23 a.m. on July 24, 2022, the Lyft driver picked up Wolf and five friends in Dewey, to drive them back to where they were staying in Bethany.
Five adults piled into the back seat of the mid-size SUV, which didn’t have a third row, and a sixth customer sat in the front passenger seat.
On an unlit stretch of southbound Coastal Highway, the passengers noticed “that an approximately five-year old child was in the rear cargo space of the SUV and unrestrained.”
The suit says Wolf and his friends were concerned for the safety of the child, and started asking the child questions.
“As the Lyft passengers were talking to the child, (the driver) became infuriated and started yelling at and berating the Lyft passengers,” and stopped the SUV in the left lane of traffic, without turning on hazard signals, according to the suit.
When the driver allegedly “repeatedly screamed at the Lyft passenger, ‘Get the f*** out of the car,'” Wolf and friends implored they be dropped off at a safer, lit location, so they could summon another Lyft.
The suit says the passengers in the rear seat tried to open the rear driver’s side door to exit toward the center median, but it would not open, and remained lock, so they exited on the passenger side.
“Which of course spilled directly into oncoming traffic,” said Shanin Specter, an attorney representing Wolf’s wife and two young children told NBC Washington. “Mr. Wolf was the first person out of the vehicle, and he was struck immediately by a passing motorist and was killed.”
The suit against the driver and Lyft is based on “Lyft’s failure to properly supervise their driver, failure to properly train their driver, and also for their responsibility as the employer of the Lyft driver,” Specter told NBC Washington.
The suit seeks monetary compensation for Wolf’s survivors, but Specter is “looking to have Lyft reform themselves with respect to their hiring, training and supervision of their drivers, because this type of thing should never be allowed to happen.”
So far, no charges have been filed against the Lyft driver. The driver of the vehicle that struck Wolf was not charged.
WTOP is seeking comment on the lawsuit from Lyft.
