MIAMI – Detectives who were investigating a 49-year-old ride-share driver on Saturday in Miami fear that he hurt more women than they know about.
A woman told Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer on Friday in bond court that Danny Maurad had drugged, kidnapped, battered, and robbed her while she was visiting from California.
“You made me believe that that was my Uber,” the woman from California told Maurad during the hearing in court.
The woman told police officers that after she got into the car in South Beach she woke up in a motel in Miami with bruises all over her body, according to police. She told Glazer she needed knee surgery.
“I don’t know what they did to me ... The injuries that I have, there is no way, if I was not drugged that I would have been able to tolerate the pain,” the victim told Glazer.
The attack was in January. According to the arrest form, Maurad used her identification and card to rent the room, stole about $250 in cash from the victim, and used her card to fill up his gas tank. A front desk worker at the motel remembered Maurad and the victim, who appeared intoxicated, according to police.
“I don’t think she consented to being taken to the location,” Glazer said in court.
Detectives suspect Maurad was preying on women late at night while driving a silver or black sports utility vehicle, according to a statement that Officer Kiara Delva, a spokeswoman for the Miami Police Department, released on Saturday.
Miami-Dade correctional officers booked Maurad, also known as Danny Estalin Maurad-Avecillas, shortly after 3:05 a.m., on Friday, and he was at the Metrowest Detention Center on Sunday morning in Doral, according to county inmate records.
Maurad was facing two counts of fraudulent use of a credit card and one count of fraudulent possession of identification. A judge denied him bond.
Detectives were asking women who were his victims to come forward if they hadn’t done so.
Delva asked anyone with information about the crimes described to contact detectives at 305-603-6300, or 305-579-6111, or via e-mail at svu@miami-police.org, or Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Mercedes Cevallos contributed to this report.