A Kentucky woman has been charged with fatally shooting her West Texas Uber driver after mistakenly believing she was being kidnapped and taken to Mexico, police say.
Phoebe Copas, 48, remained in jail Sunday in El Paso, Texas, after being charged with murder last week in the death of 52-year-old Daniel Piedra Garcia.
Copas allegedly shot Garcia on U.S. Route 54 while driving her to a destination in El Paso’s Mission Valley on June 16, the El Paso Police Department said in a statement.
“At some point during the drive, Copas thought he was being taken to Mexico and shot Piedra. The investigation does not support a kidnapping or that Piedra deviated from Copas’ destination,” the statement said .
Copas was arrested and initially charged with aggravated assault with serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony.
Piedra was hospitalized for several days before his family took him off life support after doctors told them he would not recover.
El Paso Police
After Piedra’s death, police said they would file murder charges against Copas.
Court and jail records do not list an attorney who could speak for Copas. She is being held on $1.5 million bail, according to The Associated Press.
The shooting happened when Copas, who is from Tompkinsville, Kentucky, was in El Paso visiting her boyfriend, authorities said.
During the trip, Copas saw road signs that read “Juarez, Mexico,” according to an arrest affidavit. El Paso is located on the US-Mexico border across from Juárez.
Believing she was being kidnapped and taken to Mexico, Copas is accused of grabbing a gun from her purse and shooting Piedra in the head, according to the affidavit. The vehicle crashed into barriers before coming to rest on a freeway.
The area where the car crashed “was not near a bridge, port of entry or other area with immediate access to travel to Mexico,” according to the affidavit.
Police allege that before calling 911, Copas took a photo of Piedra after the shooting and texted it to her boyfriend.
“He was a hard-working man and very funny,” Piedra’s niece, Didi Lopez, he told the El Paso Times. “He was never in a bad mood. He was always the one who, if he saw you in a bad mood, would come over and try to lift you up.”
A GoFundMe campaign set up by Piedra’s family said he was her sole provider and had recently returned to work after being injured at his previous job.
“I wish he would have spoken up, asked questions, not acted on impulse and made a rash decision, because not only did he ruin our lives, he ruined hers,” Lopez said. “We just want justice for him. That’s all we’re asking for.”
