Lyft Driver Who Allegedly Assaulted Clare Dunn Arrested, Charged
The Lyft driver who allegedly assaulted Clare Dunn in late June has been arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault.
Albert Boakye, 46, was arrested on Monday night (Aug. 9), Nashville's Fox 17 reports. After being charged, he was freed on $1,000 bond.
Dunn shared her side of the story in a recent People feature, recalling how Boakye had picked the singer and a friend up after they'd been out in Nashville early on the morning of June 26. He dropped Dunn's friend — who is not named in People's story — off first, without incident, but the artist says that things took a turn after she asked Boakye to stay off the highway on his way to her home.
"We were barreling towards the interstate and I spoke up and was like, 'Hey, that was my turn. Where are you going? You need to take the next right turn,'" Dunn remembers. "I just knew in that moment that I wasn't going to get on that interstate with him. I wasn't going to go quietly where he wanted to take me. And I think he realized maybe this girl was going to be more trouble than she's worth."
According to Dunn's account, Boakye pulled the car over about a mile away from her house; Fox 17 reports that they were on Highway 70, which runs from east to west through Nashville. "Before I could even get my shoes off or get my phone to try and call 911, he grabbed me by the collar, ripped me out of the backseat and slammed me face-first down into a ditch," Dunn recounts.
"When I came to, I was screaming, and I saw headlights," she remembers. "He ended up just leaving me alone at that point and took off."
Dunn says she ran home, went to the emergency room and filed a police report. A photo the singer provided to People shows her face after the incident: swollen and bruised, with blood running from the bridge of her nose to the bottom of her chin.
In a statement to People, Lyft reports that they "permanently removed the driver from the Lyft platform as soon as we learned of this incident" and both "reached out to Ms. Dunn to offer our support and are assisting law enforcement with their investigation." However, because Boakye marked Dunn's ride as complete and she did not get his information during the ride, it took time to identify and find him.
Dunn — who is set to release a new EP, In This Kind of Light, on Friday (Aug. 13) — has returned to her farm in Colorado, which she calls "a safe place for me right now." Still, she shares, "I wake up a couple of times throughout the night thinking I heard something — like someone's at my back door."
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