MILWAUKEE — Tashanci Kendle just wanted to get to her dad’s house to babysit her younger siblings. Instead, the 17 year old says a Lyft driver took her miles past her destination, turned off the ride-tracking app, and wouldn’t let her out of the car until he kissed her.
“He put his arm around me and was just scooting me closer to him,” Kendle told 620 WTMJ. “He started kissing on my cheek and stuff like that. And with his arm, he just grabbed my face with both his hands and started kissing all on me.”
“I just froze up”
Kendle’s father Eric Grant had sent the Lyft to pick her up from her mother’s home on the evening of July 24 to bring her to his house on Milwaukee’s south side, something he had done before. This time, she said, something felt off as soon as she got in the black Honda HR-V.
“I got in the back seat, put my seatbelt on. It just seemed like everything was normal,” she said. “But I keep seeing him turn back a little bit and looking at me through the mirror.”
The driver, who Kendle said spoke only Spanish, used a phone translation app to talk to her. He asked her age. She told him: 17.
“And when I was looking at the screen, he was like, ‘Oh’, basically saying age is nothing but a number,'” she recalled. “He said, ‘You can’t let people judge you.'”
Then, she said, he stopped the car and motioned for her to move to the front seat.
“I was like, ‘No, it’s okay, keep driving,'” she said. “But then he stopped the car and he parked. He was patting the seat, waving his hand for me to come to the front.”
She moved up front. That’s when she says the questions got more aggressive. He asked if she had a boyfriend. He told her she was “very pretty”. He said he wanted to meet her father because he would become his “father-in-law”.
“I was like, ‘What?'” Kendle said. “He was like, ‘You know, I have kids. You can be a mother, a stepmom.’ And when he started saying stuff like that, that’s when I started getting uncomfortable.”
She scooted toward the door. That’s when he allegedly grabbed her arm.
“He was like, ‘Oh, I’m not trying to make you nervous or scared. I want you to be comfortable,'” she said. “But he still had my arm.”
Then he ended the ride while they were still in the car, well past her father’s home. “I kept asking him, ‘Just drop me off. Just drop me off,'” she said. “He ended it, and he parked the car. He still had my arm.”
Kendle said he asked for her phone number repeatedly. When she refused, he persisted. Finally, she gave it to him, hoping it would buy her freedom.
“He was like, ‘I just feel like I can do a lot for you financially. Like, I can give you weekly pay, $50,'” she said. “I’m just sitting there looking at the screen, reading off what he was basically saying. I was just quiet.”
Then he allegedly asked for a kiss.
“He was like, ‘Besito, besito,’ asking me for a kiss,” she said. “I was like, ‘No. No, thank you. Can you just keep driving?'”
He moved closer. He put his arm around her again. He tried to cover her eyes.
“With my arm that was loose, I was pushing his hand away from me,” she said. “I was like, ‘No. Like, no, I’m not going to kiss you. No.'”
He kissed her cheeks, then her lips. She kept her mouth closed until she tried to speak.
“When I said, ‘Stop,’ and I tried to back up, that’s when my mouth had opened when I was trying to talk,” she said. “And he had started trying to stick his tongue in my mouth and just do extra.”
She pushed him off. He grabbed her arm again.
“I feel like I kind of froze up,” Kendle said. “I just felt stiff. Like, I didn’t know what to do. I was just sitting there.”
She was nowhere to be found
While Kendle was trapped in the car, her father was watching his phone.
“The Lyft picked her up and was headed south, to my house. It said two minutes away to drop off,” Eric Grant said. “So I’m waiting. Two minutes passed. Five minutes passed, 10 minutes passed, she still ain’t walking in the house.”
He went outside. She wasn’t there. He called the girl’s mother Tiffany Kendle. They searched the neighborhood. Then they called 911 — about 20 minutes before their daughter finally appeared.
“She came walking up the street, all scared and crying, shaking up,” Grant said. “And she said the Lyft driver had took her down for his home, probably like 10 blocks away from my house.”
Kendle had convinced the driver to let her type a new destination into his phone: Forest Home School. When they got close, she heard the doors unlock. She reached for the handle. He allegedly grabbed her again.
“He put on the translator thing, and he was basically asking me, ‘When is my free days? When is he going to be able to see me again?'” she said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’m busy.’ He was like, ‘Well, I’m sure you’re free at least one time out of the week.'”
He hugged her. He kissed her again. She pushed away, opened the door, and ran.
“I never looked back,” she said. “I just kept walking. I was just glad that I was out of the car.”
She was walking through a parking lot when her mother spotted her.
“She was like, ‘Are you okay? What happened?'” Kendle said. “And I just broke down, crying in her arms.”
“Kissing is not assault”
Milwaukee Police arrived and took a report — case number C260724013 — documenting the incident as “a false imprisonment / disorderly conduct” near S. 13th Street and W. Forest Home Avenue just before 8:00 p.m. on July 24.
“The suspect, a ride service driver, intentionally detained the victim in his vehicle against the victim’s will causing the victim to fear for their safety. The victim was able to exit the vehicle and summon for assistance. Milwaukee Police continue to seek the unknown suspect.”
Later that night, forensics officers photographed Kendle and took DNA swabs from her mouth and face. But the family says the officers who first responded treated her like a suspect, not a victim.
“They asked her what happened. She told them the exact story,” Grant said. “And they still asking her the same questions over and over. I’m like, ‘She’s the victim. Like, why is y’all still asking her the same questions that she already gave you the answers to?'”
Kendle said one officer kept calling her “Melanie.”
“He just kept saying, ‘Melanie. Melanie,'” she said. “My mom, she just started going off a little bit. She was like, ‘Why are you calling her Melanie? Like, she just said her name. Her name is not Melanie. Her name is Tashanci. And you keep asking her to repeat the story — it’s clear that you weren’t even listening to her.'”
Tiffany Kendle said an officer pulled her aside with a message that stopped her cold.
“He told me that this is not a case,” Kendle said. “Technically, kissing is not an assault. And if I take her to the hospital, I’ll be turned away because they don’t do kids on kissing.”
Tashanci Kendle said the repeated questioning made her feel like the officers didn’t believe her.
“It felt like they already had their minds made up of everything,” she said. “It was just hard to keep repeating the same story.”
While waiting for forensics, she couldn’t wash her face. She couldn’t shower. She just kept spitting.
“I just felt disgusted,” she said.
Lyft account suspended
Grant said he called Lyft that same night to report what happened. At 9:32 p.m. on July 24, he got an email from someone named Luis on the Lyft Safety Team. It didn’t address the allegation. It sent him a link to a generic page about third-party data requests.
Then, he said, Lyft suspended his account.
“I can’t call for a ride,” Grant said. “Because my account’s ‘under review’ due to the incident.”
Tiffany Kendle was stunned. “He tried to book today to go to work, and they suspended his account. Until the investigation. It’s under investigation because he made a complaint.”
The family provided a screenshot of the driver’s Lyft profile that lists him as “Julian Daza” driving a black Honda HR-V.
Police, she said, told her the name on file didn’t match the profile.
“Y’all telling me y’all can’t do nothing,”Kendle said. “And he was just right here. Y’all got the make and the model of the car. It can’t be that hard to track him down.”
“I feel very violated”
In a text message to WTMJ’s Tory Lowe on July 28, Grant received an update from Lyft that the driver was allegedly fired from the service.
But several days after the incident, Tashaancy Kendle is still shaken. She hasn’t heard from the driver, but he has her number. He knows where her father lives. She still has to pass the area where she escaped.
“I feel very violated,” she said. “And having to drive past that school and still living in the house and knowing that he knows where I stay — it’s just uncomfortable.”
Her father bought her a lipstick-sized stun gun. She carries it now. “Creeps out here,” Grant said. “For her safety, for her protection.”
Tiffany Kendle said she can’t stop thinking about how much worse it could have been.
“He could have took her anywhere,” she said. “I’m still in shock. She in shock. She’s a high school student. I’m so grateful, because that could have just been a different outcome.”
WTMJ has not been able to reach the Lyft driver for comment.
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Safety Tips: What parents should know before booking a ride-share for teens
The Kendle family’s experience has raised urgent questions about how parents can better protect children and teens using ride-share services. Here what safety experts recommend:
Request a female driver when possible.
Uber’s “Women Preferences” feature that was expanded nationwide in March 2026 allows female riders and teen account users to request a female driver on-demand, reserve one in advance, or set a standing preference in app settings. Lyft offers a similar feature called “Women+ Connect,” that was rolled out nationwide in 2024. Neither guarantees a match — women make up roughly one in five U.S. drivers on Uber — but both increase the odds.
Use teen accounts, not adult profiles.
Both Uber and Lyft offer teen-specific accounts that include built-in safeguards: trip tracking shared with parents, PIN verification to confirm the right car, and the ability to request female drivers. Booking a ride under a parent’s adult account — as happened in this case — strips away those protections.
Verify the car and driver before anyone gets in.
The family noted that Lyft does not display license plates as prominently as Uber does. Experts advise: if the car, driver, or plate does not match the app exactly, do not get in — and teach teens to walk away and call a parent.
Track the ride in real time.
Parents should follow the trip on their own device. If the car deviates from the route or the ride ends unexpectedly, that is a red flag to call the rider immediately — and 911 if they do not answer.
Arm teens with a plan.
Eric Grant bought his daughter a lipstick-sized stun gun the day after the incident. Safety experts also recommend teens carry a fully charged phone, know how to share their live location, and have a code word to alert parents if something is wrong.
Report immediately, and document everything.
Screenshot the driver profile, ride details, and any communications. Request the police report number and follow up in writing. If the company is unresponsive, file a complaint with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Federal Trade Commission.
