Edhat StaffBy edhat staff
A former Uber driver from Santa Maria was sentenced to jail after sexually assaulting an intoxicated passenger.
Shadi Aziz Abdul, 37, was sentenced to one year in county jail on Thursday after pleading guilty.
A woman reported to police in April that an Uber driver picked her up and drove her to a location in Santa Maria. Before reaching the destination, the driver took the passenger to another location and raped her in his vehicle. Abdul was identified as the driver and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested him at the United States-Mexico border in San Diego.
He was sentenced to one year in jail, five years of felony probation and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
One year for kidnapping & rape?
Major prosecutor fail.
WTF were they thinking?
It’s clear that, as much as this sounds as a miscarriage of justice, we don’t have all the facts. Judges don’t hand out light sentences for rape charges for no good reason. I’m sure there’s more to this and since none of us was in the courtroom for the trial, we don’t know what it was.
@10:29am: There is absolutely no amount of extraneous circumstances that could make this light sentence acceptable. Judges are just people and they do make mistakes. This is a hugely concerning mistake. What judge made this decision? I think they should be removed.
11:24 – well for one thing, what was the official conviction? If it was “sexual assault,” then it could be a range of actions that they found he was actually found guilty of, not necessarily rape. Sexual assault can be a non-consensual kiss or touch. I don’t know, so I’m not speculating, but just trying to think of reasons for such a relatively light sentence.