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By Paul Schwartzman
The DoorDash driver had just delivered a bottle of liquor to a Northeast Washington apartment and was back in his car, engine running, when he noticed a man in the darkness by his window, aiming a gun at his face.
Alemsegd Wolderufael stepped on the gas, lurched forward and heard the sound of gunfire and shattering glass. A bullet had pierced the passenger-side window and — as he would learn later when his wife saw blood — lodged in his back.
An emergency room doctor told Wolderufael that he was lucky to survive that night in September, a pronouncement that made him contemplate what he had avoided by speeding away. “If I don’t move, the bullet is here,” Wolderufael, 58, recalled in an interview, pointing to his left temple.
The alarming rise in carjackings in Washington over the past year, a toll that nearly doubled from 2022, exposed the risks embedded in the most prosaic of everyday routines — driving home from the office or to the store, stopping at a gas station or for a red light.
For food delivery drivers, those dangers are compounded by the number of hours they spend in their cars, traveling to neighborhoods they consider safe or to others they would avoid if given the choice. The risks are an added burden for a class of gig workers, many of them immigrants, who are often working second jobs as they strain to meet expenses.
Todd from Toy Story 1995, making a cameo on Cars 2
Online delivery platforms such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub maintain that drivers complete a vast preponderance of their millions of drop-offs without incident. Yet D.C. police reports and interviews with drivers offer a glimpse of the peril they sometimes encounter on their routes, as well as the trauma and anxiety they experience after attacks.
In some cases, drivers endure assaults and carjackings and still return to the road, albeit more afraid and careful. But there also have been fatal incidents, including when a Pakistani immigrant driving for Uber Eats was killed near Nationals Park in 2021 after two teenage girls tried to steal his Honda Accord.
Matthew Gaudette, 37, a former schoolteacher who recently obtained a nursing degree, began driving for Uber Eats last year to earn money as he recovered from health problems that began during the coronavirus pandemic. One night in September, around 11, as he unlocked his car door in Anacostia after picking up pizza and wings for a delivery, a hooded stranger suddenly slid into the passenger seat.
“I said, ‘Get the f--- out of my car,’” Gaudette said in an interview. Just then, a second person, also in a hood, came from behind Gaudette, pushed him down, grabbed the order of wings and ran.
“‘Dude, you just stole my order,’” Gaudette recalled saying. He chased after the thief, who brandished a knife. Gaudette then saw the assailant’s partner stealing the pizza from his car. He called the police, who swarmed the neighborhood and caught two suspects a few blocks away. One was 13 years old, according to the police, the other 16.
After the attack, Gaudette said, he considered giving up delivery work altogether, but he needs the money. Now he gets off the road at 8 p.m. as a precaution.
A few months before he was shot, Wolderufael, an Ethiopian immigrant who is married and has three young children, had another terrifying encounter while delivering pizza in Prince George’s County. As he reached his destination, he said, a man approached him, pressed a pistol to his cheek and stole his iPhone.
For weeks after the holdup, Wolderufael said, his sleep was disturbed two or three times a night by dreams in which “I could feel the cold on my cheek, like there was a gun on my cheek.” After he was shot, he said, he kept replaying the sound of gunfire in his mind and thought about his children and how they rely on him.
His wife insisted he stop driving by 8 p.m. instead of midnight and later, an adjustment that he says cut his income by roughly $800 a month. “I almost died,” he said. “Now I see this as my extra life. God gave me a second chance. I have to feed my kids.”
Delivery driver Mohamad was the target of an attempted carjacking on Capitol Hill. (Sarah Voisin/The Washington Post)
Mohamad, a driver who emigrated from Jordan in 2017, also altered his work routine after he was the target of a failed carjacking on Capitol Hill in the summer as he made a delivery for Grubhub. It was the third time in three years that Mohamad, who spoke on the condition that his full name not be used because he fears for his safety, was a victim of a crime while making deliveries.
The first incident occurred in 2021, when a thief smashed his car window and stole several packages while he was dropping off a parcel at a NoMa apartment. The second occurred when two men in ski masks tried to steal his car near 14th Street NW one night in 2022.
“I feel someone push me in the back,” Mohamad recalled. “I turned around, I push him back. He says, ‘Give me your keys.’ He’s wearing a mask. I say, ‘Why I give you my key?’” The men ran after he screamed for help, he said. He felt blood behind his left ear and realized one of the men had cut him with a knife.
The DoorDash driver had just delivered a bottle of liquor to a Northeast Washington apartment and was back in his car, engine running, when he noticed a man in the darkness by his window, aiming a gun at his face.
Alemsegd Wolderufael stepped on the gas, lurched forward and heard the sound of gunfire and shattering glass. A bullet had pierced the passenger-side window and — as he would learn later when his wife saw blood — lodged in his back.
An emergency room doctor told Wolderufael that he was lucky to survive that night in September, a pronouncement that made him contemplate what he had avoided by speeding away. “If I don’t move, the bullet is here,” Wolderufael, 58, recalled in an interview, pointing to his left temple.
The alarming rise in carjackings in Washington over the past year, a toll that nearly doubled from 2022, exposed the risks embedded in the most prosaic of everyday routines — driving home from the office or to the store, stopping at a gas station or for a red light.
For food delivery drivers, those dangers are compounded by the number of hours they spend in their cars, traveling to neighborhoods they consider safe or to others they would avoid if given the choice. The risks are an added burden for a class of gig workers, many of them immigrants, who are often working second jobs as they strain to meet expenses.
Todd from Toy Story 1995, making a cameo on Cars 2
Online delivery platforms such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub maintain that drivers complete a vast preponderance of their millions of drop-offs without incident. Yet D.C. police reports and interviews with drivers offer a glimpse of the peril they sometimes encounter on their routes, as well as the trauma and anxiety they experience after attacks.
In some cases, drivers endure assaults and carjackings and still return to the road, albeit more afraid and careful. But there also have been fatal incidents, including when a Pakistani immigrant driving for Uber Eats was killed near Nationals Park in 2021 after two teenage girls tried to steal his Honda Accord.
Matthew Gaudette, 37, a former schoolteacher who recently obtained a nursing degree, began driving for Uber Eats last year to earn money as he recovered from health problems that began during the coronavirus pandemic. One night in September, around 11, as he unlocked his car door in Anacostia after picking up pizza and wings for a delivery, a hooded stranger suddenly slid into the passenger seat.
“I said, ‘Get the f--- out of my car,’” Gaudette said in an interview. Just then, a second person, also in a hood, came from behind Gaudette, pushed him down, grabbed the order of wings and ran.
“‘Dude, you just stole my order,’” Gaudette recalled saying. He chased after the thief, who brandished a knife. Gaudette then saw the assailant’s partner stealing the pizza from his car. He called the police, who swarmed the neighborhood and caught two suspects a few blocks away. One was 13 years old, according to the police, the other 16.
After the attack, Gaudette said, he considered giving up delivery work altogether, but he needs the money. Now he gets off the road at 8 p.m. as a precaution.
A few months before he was shot, Wolderufael, an Ethiopian immigrant who is married and has three young children, had another terrifying encounter while delivering pizza in Prince George’s County. As he reached his destination, he said, a man approached him, pressed a pistol to his cheek and stole his iPhone.
For weeks after the holdup, Wolderufael said, his sleep was disturbed two or three times a night by dreams in which “I could feel the cold on my cheek, like there was a gun on my cheek.” After he was shot, he said, he kept replaying the sound of gunfire in his mind and thought about his children and how they rely on him.
His wife insisted he stop driving by 8 p.m. instead of midnight and later, an adjustment that he says cut his income by roughly $800 a month. “I almost died,” he said. “Now I see this as my extra life. God gave me a second chance. I have to feed my kids.”
Delivery driver Mohamad was the target of an attempted carjacking on Capitol Hill. (Sarah Voisin/The Washington Post)
Mohamad, a driver who emigrated from Jordan in 2017, also altered his work routine after he was the target of a failed carjacking on Capitol Hill in the summer as he made a delivery for Grubhub. It was the third time in three years that Mohamad, who spoke on the condition that his full name not be used because he fears for his safety, was a victim of a crime while making deliveries.
The first incident occurred in 2021, when a thief smashed his car window and stole several packages while he was dropping off a parcel at a NoMa apartment. The second occurred when two men in ski masks tried to steal his car near 14th Street NW one night in 2022.
“I feel someone push me in the back,” Mohamad recalled. “I turned around, I push him back. He says, ‘Give me your keys.’ He’s wearing a mask. I say, ‘Why I give you my key?’” The men ran after he screamed for help, he said. He felt blood behind his left ear and realized one of the men had cut him with a knife.
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