The Uber driver who transported Nikolas Cruz to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 said that the ride was unremarkable and that she believed he was going to be a music class.
The driver, who did not wish to be identified, told CBS 4 that she picked up the 19-year-old from the Loxahatchee Road home in Parkland where he was staying, and thought nothing of it when he climbed into the car with a large object and asked her to go to the high school.
“I saw him with a backpack which I thought was a guitar case. He told me I am going to my music class,” the driver said, adding that she did notice any alarming behavior.
“Just a normal person,” she said. “I didn’t see anything strange or something like that, no.”
The driver explained that she is not fluent in English, and that she didn’t speak at length with her passenger, who told her “nothing, nothing, nothing” of his plans to attack the school. Ultimately, Cruz killed 17 people, including 14 students.
Even after the driver learned about the shooting, it still didn’t occur to her that her passenger might have been the gunman — until she got a call from the Broward County Sheriff’s office.
“Don’t be afraid,” someone from BSO told her over the phone. “You have nothing to do with this.”
But the driver says she is afraid of the threat of gun violence while she works.
“I have passengers in my car and I’m scared because anybody can have a gun,” she said.
The woman appears to be struggling with her inadvertent role in the deadly shooting. A few days after the shooting, she picked up a fare that was going to one of the victims’ funerals.
“I made an Uber and I went to a funeral and I started to cry,” she said. “I don’t know. I feel involved with all this tragedy.”
[Feature image: Associated Press]