photo credit: Tero Vesalainen // Shutterstock
On Tuesday morning, an Uber driver shot and killed a man who cut him off in traffic, slammed on the breaks and got out of the car to approach the Uber, thinking his girlfriend was in the car.
Jason Boek followed the Uber he thought his girlfriend was in after a heated text exchange. Boek swerved in front of the Uber and slammed his breaks, almost causing an accident on the two-lane road between himself and the Uber. Boek then jumped out of his car, quickly walking towards the Uber. Robert Westlake, the Uber driver, say Boek announced “”You know I got a pistol?” while holding an object in the air. “You want me to f****** shoot you?”. And with that, Westlake shot & killed Boek.
Westlake, 38, was not just an Uber driver, he’s a licensed armed security guard who holds a concealed weapons permit and who had just completed training to be a police officer. After the shooting, Westlake called 911 in an attempt to save Boek. “He dropped a cell phone. I kicked it away,” said Westlake, who said he didn’t realize it was a cell phone at first.
The whole interaction was caught on the dash cam of the Uber. The Polk County Sheriff called the case a classic “stand your ground” case. A law in Florida that grants immunity to people acting in self-defense. “This is a justifiable homicide all day long. You have the right protect yourself,” Sheriff Grady Judd said Wednesday. “This was the intent of the law.”
The sheriff also had this to say: “Here’s a message for the hotheads of the community: Don’t do that stuff,” Judd said. “Good people carry guns and they will shoot you. A lot. Graveyard dead.”