Uber driver guilty in rape case
WEST CHESTER >> A Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case of an Uber driver accused of raping a woman he had picked up for a ride at the Valley Forge Casino found him guilty on all charges Thursday.
The jury of eight women and four men deliberated about 2 ½ hours before returning with the verdict to a packed courtroom in the Chester County Justice Center around 2:45 p.m. One of the jurors, a young women with brown hair, smiled at the victim as she took her place in the jury box before the verdict was announced.
The defendant, Ahmed Mostafa Elgaafary, showed no reaction to the verdict as the forewoman read it in open court. His family members, gathered in the courtroom behind him, also stayed silent.
Elgaafary was found guilty on counts of rape of an unconscious person, sexual assault, and two counts of indecent assault one dealing with an unconscious person.
Judge Patrick Carmody, who presided over the fourday long trial, revoked Elgaafary’s bail upon the request of thee lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Vince. Citing the guilty verdict on the charge of rape, Carmody said the jury had determined he was a “danger to the community. I cannot in god faith allow you to be out working as a Uber driver.” Elgaafary had actually had his Uber account suspended after he became accused of the February 2018 assault.
He will be held in Chester County Prison pending bail.
The case pitted the woman’s account of waking up after a night on the town at the casino with family members and having a “bad gut feeling” that something bad had happened to her on the way home that she could not remember, with Elgaafary’s assertion that the woman had consented to having sex with him after meeting him only a few minutes before.
The panel of eight women and four men got the case from Carmody after hearing about 70 minutes of closing arguments from attorneys for the two sides.
Cocco, in his presentation to the jury, pointed to the woman’s high level of intoxication as evidence that she was incapable of knowing what was happening to her that night or being legally able to give consent to have sex with Elgaafary. She had testified that she had been drinking several glasses of wine and mixed drinks for some hours before leaving the casino after the bars there had closed.
As illustration, he showed the jury a photo that Elgaafary had taken of the woman that night, lying prone with her eyes closed and traces of vomit on her face, a photo he used to try to get a cleaning fee from Uber after her ride had ended. When the photograph flashed on the video screen in the courtroom, the woman, who had been sitting in the front row of seats, got up and left the courtroom in distress. She returned a few moments later after calming down.
“He knew she was too intoxicated to make any reasonable judgment about anything” that night,” Cocco said of Elgaafary, who listened stoically to the accusations against him. “He knew she was vulnerable, and he knew she was alone and in his car, and he could do what he wanted.”
But defense attorney Melissa McCafferty of West Chester, representing Elgaafary, told the jury that what had occurred between the two of them was not criminal, but rather a drunken act by a woman who was upset about an exboyfriend.
“She seduced him,” McCafferty said as the woman listened. “She initiated the sexual encounter and then tried to get him to come into her house with her. Just because (she) doesn’t remember the sex doesn’t mean she wasn’t conscious.”
Elgaafary, 27, of Lansdale, a father of one, now faces a likely term in state prison, followed by deportation to his native Egypt after completing his sentence.
Ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft have been struggling to deal with accusations across the country that female passengers are the targets of unwanted attention by their drivers, or in more extreme cases, the victims of attacks. The situations can range from ones in which the passengers feel uncomfortable with comments made to them by drivers about their appearance or directly personal questions about their marital status to outright physical or sexual assaults.