A 35-year-old former Toronto Lyft driver has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a “terrified” passenger who mistakenly got into his car more than two years ago.
Salih Ozturk, who initially faced four charges related to the incident, was convicted Feb. 13 on one count of sexual assault and one count of unlawful confinement, following a three-day, judge-alone trial before Ontario Superior Court Justice Heather McArthur at the 361 University Ave. courts in Toronto.
He was found not guilty of choking to facilitate sexual assault and was acquitted during trial on the charge of uttering threats to cause bodily harm, with consent from Crown prosecutor Scott Arnold.
His sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 27.
Competing testimonies
Ozturk’s victim, whose name is protected by a publication ban, testified she met the driver in the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 2023, while attempting to get home after a night out with friends.
She was intoxicated, so her friends helped her book a Lyft and get into the car. She did not check to make sure she was getting into the right vehicle.
Ozturk testified he was driving with Lyft that night and believed she was the passenger he was being directed to pick up, only to realize later that the passenger had cancelled their trip.
Justice McArthur confirmed there was "no dispute" the victim mistakenly got into the wrong car, adding a screenshot from Lyft was provided as evidence to show she missed her intended ride.
As for what happened once the victim was in the car, McArthur told the court they gave “diametrically opposed” accounts.
While the victim alleged Ozturk forced himself on her — and that she had screamed, said no and tried to fight him off — Ozturk claimed she initiated every sexual act.
He said the encounter happened when he pulled over after hearing gagging sounds in the back seat. When he opened the door to check on the victim, he said she became flirtatious and pulled him toward her.
McArthur rejected Ozturk’s version of events.
"I accept that people can act in surprising ways, especially if they've been drinking,” she read from her judgment. “But if someone’s on the verge of vomiting, it seems unusual that they would suddenly and aggressively initiate sexual contact with a complete and total stranger."
Conversely, she found the victim’s testimony “clear, coherent and consistent,” despite some details being foggy due to her intoxication at the time.
McArthur said she was “troubled” that Ozturk’s timeline of events did not match the evidence. A GPS tracker on the victim’s phone showed the victim was in Ozturk’s car for about two hours.
Ozturk’s lawyer, Ozgur Gur, argued during the trial that the tracker was inaccurate. But McArthur concluded this was irrelevant, saying the real issue was that Ozturk “did not have a good response” when questioned about why the victim was in his car for so long.
McArthur conceded she had reasonable doubt on the count of choking to facilitate sexual assault, but only after rejecting Gur’s trial defence that rested on the lack of physical evidence.
“The fact that there were no visible injuries on [the victim’s] neck does not mean she was not choked,” she told the court.
But because the victim did not initially provide this detail and only added it after a “somewhat leading question,” McArthur found Ozturk not guilty on this count, despite believing it “highly likely” he committed the offence.
On the charge of unlawful confinement, McArthur accepted the victim's testimony that she tried to get out of the car, but the doors were locked, and that Ozturk slapped her phone out of her hand when she tried to call her boyfriend for help.
The victim was “terrified and thought she was going to die,” McArthur said, finding Ozturk guilty on this count.
Rideshare assaults
Ozturk’s conviction adds to a growing number of sexual assault cases involving rideshare drivers in Ontario.
In 2021, then-32-year-old Waqar Ali was sentenced to more than 18 months’ imprisonment and three years’ probation for sexually assaulting two separate passengers while working as an Uber driver in Toronto.
He picked up both victims while they were highly inebriated, despite neither of them actually scheduling a ride through the app, according to the 2021 judgment in Ali's case. He entered one of the victim’s homes upon dropping her off and proceeded to go through her wallet. The other victim he “unceremoniously dumped” in a parking lot, the judgment said.
Lyft driver Ghassan Kullab also received a custodial sentence in 2024, after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 22-year-old passenger in Mississauga.
Instead of taking her to the requested location, Kullab found somewhere to park, got into the back seat and attempted to have sex with the non-consenting victim, according to the judgment in his case.
In an interview with CBC News in June, Toronto lawyer Darryl Singer said he’s personally worked on “around a dozen" alleged sexual assault cases involving rideshare apps in the last five years.
But despite growing concerns about passenger safety, Lyft has not released Canadian data on sexual assaults involving its drivers. Lyft's most recent Safety Transparency Report, covering incidents in the United States only between 2020 and 2022, notes that more than 2,500 sexual assaults occurred, adding the number is 21 per cent lower than their previous report.
In a written statement provided to Humber Et Cetera, Lyft confirmed Ozturk's driver account has been "permanently deactivated" since 2024. It did not specify the deactivation date.
