The ride-share company Lyft confirmed Friday that a woman found shot to death earlier this week in her car on the city’s West Side was driving for company at the time of her death.
Police said in an initial report that they found a woman shot in the head in her car in the 4800 block of West Thomas Street in the Austin neighborhood at about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, having crashed into two parked cars. A witness told officers that a man and a woman fled the vehicle after the crash, police said.
The Cook County medical examiner later identified the woman as Adriana Arocha, 34.
A Lyft spokesperson said the company had contacted the woman’s family and police investigators and offered condolences to Arocha’s relatives.
Arocha is at least the second ride-share driver to become a homicide victim this month.
Livery and ride-share driver Mohammed al Hijoj, of Chicago’s Dunning neighborhood on the Far Northwest Side, was shot to death Dec. 3 while driving for Uber in the Austin neighborhood. On Dec. 8, a woman stabbed a taxi driver in the head with a box cutter after a dispute over how she would pay for the ride escalated into a physical altercation, according to a police report.
As of Friday morning, police said no one was in custody in connection with either al Hijoj’s or Arocha’s deaths as detectives continued to investigate the slayings.