Subject: LOL: ‘You know I got a pistol?’ the man yelled. So the Uber driver shot him Thu Aug 30, 2018 8:48 pm
After a heated text message exchange with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Jason Boek followed an Uber he thought was giving her a ride home.
Driving along a dark stretch of two-lane road in central Florida, Boek swerved his pickup truck early Tuesday morning in front of the rideshare car.
Uber driver Robert Westlake slammed on his brakes.
They narrowly avoided a crash and stopped in the middle of the roadway.
Then, Boek jumped out of his truck and quickly walked toward Westlake’s Hyundai Elantra.
“You know I got a pistol?” Boek said, holding an object in the air. “You want me to f****** shoot you?”
Bang. With one shot, the Uber driver killed him.
The fatal confrontation, captured on Westlake’s dash camera, was what the Polk County sheriff called a “classic ‘stand your ground’ case,” referring to the controversial Florida law that grants immunity to people acting in self-defense.
“This is a justifiable homicide all day long. You have the right protect yourself,” Sheriff Grady Judd said Wednesday. “This was the intent of the law.”