SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A Lyft driver is speaking for the first time about being shot while dropping off a teen at a block party. Six other people were shot that night. The driver, 60-year-old Soraya Jordan, says she could have lost her life. She wants the public to know gang violence is destroying too many lives.
“Before this happened to me, Tom, I was free,” Jordan professed to Channel 2′s Tom Jones. Jordan says now she feels trapped.
“I’m not free anymore,” she said.
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She says gang violence took her from a woman who loved to get out and enjoy life, to someone who gets panic attacks when she’s in a grocery store and there’s chaos.
“It’s destroying our community,” she said.
Jordan was shot in the back in June. “I felt like they targeted the car,” she pointed out. She had worked for Lyft for eight years and had logged more than 11,000 trips. But this night was very different from any other.
Jordan says she turned the corner onto Woodford Road to drop off a teen at a block party around 11 that night.
She heard firecrackers.
Then gunfire.
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Once the smoke cleared, her passenger asked her if she was OK. “And I said I been shot. I been shot,” Jordan recalled.
Jordan was in the intensive care unit for 10 days. Doctors didn’t think she would survive.
She lost a kidney. “My lung was collapsed. My rib fractured,” she said, detailing other medical issues as well.
Now that she is out of the hospital, she says she faces more turmoil. She could lose her home since she hasn’t been able to work. “I can’t imagine being homeless. I’ve worked hard all my life,” she said.
Jordan was one of seven people shot that night. She says a child was shot. And so was a young athlete whose sports career may now be in jeopardy.
City of South Fulton police arrested Jevon Anderson in connection with the attack.
He faces multiple charges, including five counts of aggravated assault, associating with criminal street gangs and participating in criminal street gangs.
Jordan says gangs are taking a toll on innocent people. “People’s lives are being destroyed. But it’s silent. Like nobody is acknowledging the cost,” she explained.
Jordan says Anderson was in trouble before the shooting. He was supposed to be in a rehab program. Yet, she says during a court hearing recently, someone in court asked the judge to let him out again. Jordan says that doesn’t make any sense and he needs to be locked up to protect the community.
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“It has to stop. It must stop. The price is way too much,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
Anderson is being held without bond.
Jordan is not happy that Lyft is excluded from liability when a driver is shot. The company insures the car. It insures the passenger. But the human capital that makes the company its money was uninsured, she said. Channel 2 reached out to Lyft for a comment, but so far, we have not heard back.
Click on this here if you would like to assist Jordan as she recovers from the shooting.
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