DoorDasher bites man, pulls him out of car over transaction issue, Pines cops say
A Pembroke Pines delivery driver is behind bars after he was accused of biting and punching a customer over a transaction problem on the DoorDash app, according to court records.
Officers responded to the Hidden Lake Pembroke Pines gated community — the 20800 block of Johnson Street — just before 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 5, to find the scuffed up man and a DoorDash driver, 35-year-old Mohamed Abdelghafar, according to his arrest report.
Abedlghafar was instructed by the customer to meet in their cars just outside Hidden Lake to drop off a McDonald’s meal, as the delivery driver did not have gate access, Pembroke Pines police said.
But when Abdelghafar handed him the food and the customer put it on the passenger seat of his own car, police say the driver’s DoorDash app did not show that the transaction was completed, since it couldn’t track that he’d arrived at the customer’s residence.
After a quick exchange, the driver “demanded the food be returned, stating he would not be paid if he did not physically drive the food to the location listed on the DoorDash app,” reads the report.
The customer reiterated that Abdelghafar’s lack of gate access meant he couldn’t enter, prompting the driver to dive into the customer’s open car window while the vehicle was in drive and travel roughly 15-20 feet before the car was placed in park, according to investigators.
That’s when the delivery driver “intentionally bit the victim on the right trapezius, forcibly pulled him out of the vehicle and struck him repeatedly with a closed fist against his will,” police said.
The customer was left with cuts on his face, a three-inch bite mark, bruises and lacerations on his upper back, and an abrasion to his left forearm, according to officers.
When questioned by officers, Abdelghafar said he had fought with the customer about the DoorDash order, but claimed he was pulled into the customer’s car, police wrote in the affidavit.
First responders took Abdelghafar to Memorial Hospital Miamar for medical evaluation, then police later handcuffed him, in part on account of the customer’s injuries and the driver’s lack thereof, the arrest report notes.
Abdelghafar, who’s originally from Egypt, was booked into Broward Main Jail on April 6 and faces a felony charge of burglary with assualt or battery.
Broward County jail records do not list him as an inmate as of April 9. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.
