Kentucky woman fatally shoots Uber driver in El Paso after thinking he was kidnapping her to Mexico

A Kentucky woman was accused of fatally shooting her Uber driver in Texas last week after she thought he was going to kidnap her and take her to Mexico, according to authorities. 

Phoebe Copas, 48, from Tompkinsville, Kentucky, was visiting El Paso with her boyfriend. During her visit, she fatally shot 52-year-old Daniel Piedra Garcia, an Uber driver who was taking her to her destination in El Paso on June 16 at around 2 p.m., the El Paso Police Department said in a statement. 

"At some point during the drive, Copas thought she was being taken into Mexico and shot Piedra,” the police department said. According to the arrest affidavit, Copas saw a traffic sign that said “Juarez, Mexico,” a town on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Copas then grabbed a handgun from her purse and shot Piedra in the head, causing the vehicle to crash into barriers before coming to a stop. Copas called 911 

Pedra was hospitalized for several days after the incident and Copas was arrested and initially charged with aggravated assault for causing serious bodily injury. 

“The investigation does not support that a kidnapping took place or that Piedra was veering from Copas' destination," the statement said, adding that the car was "not in close proximity of a bridge, port of entry or other area with immediate access to travel into Mexico." 

However, last week, Copas was charged with murder after Piedra’s family took him off life support upon learning that he would not recover. 

Copas is being held in an El Paso jail on a $1.5 million bond, according to The Associated Press. 

"He was a hardworking man and really funny," Piedra's niece, Didi Lopez, told the El Paso Times. "He was never in a bad mood. He was always the one that, if he saw you in a bad mood, he'd come over and try to lift you up."