A Florida woman says she and her friend had to chase down an Uber driver on foot through downtown St. Petersburg late at night after the driver allegedly failed to respond to multiple contact attempts through the app. The incident, which the TikTok creator @kewch777 shared in a video, reportedly began after her friend Nikki left her phone in the back seat of an Uber following a night out.
According to the creator, Kewch, she and Nikki had gone to a baseball game at Tropicana Field before stopping at a nearby restaurant called Ferg’s. The two then took a short Uber ride to a bar called Welcome to the Farm, which she said was about a mile away from where they had parked at Tropicana Field. As soon as they stepped out of the car, she said Nikki realized she had left her phone in the back seat.
By that point, Kewch said, the driver had already driven away. She said she tried to contact the driver through the Uber app multiple times, but every call reportedly went straight to voicemail, and the driver had not set up a voicemail box. According to her, the app eventually blocked her from calling again, displaying a message that said, “You’ve maxed out the amount of times you can call this number.”
Two women on foot tracked and intercepted a moving car through downtown St. Pete
Uber support allegedly told her that the company had notified the driver and that the driver had up to 24 hours to respond. Meanwhile, Kewch said she was able to track Nikki’s phone using a shared location feature and watched it move around St. Petersburg in real time. She said the phone appeared to be only a few blocks away at first, but the driver was moving, making it difficult to catch up on foot.
According to Kewch, the driver eventually got on the highway and stopped at a Domino’s Pizza. At that point, she said she called the Domino’s location directly, hoping a staff member would go outside and alert the driver.
She said she finally got through to an employee, but the driver had already pulled out of the parking lot by the time someone picked up. “I’m so sorry to the guy who had no idea what was going on,” she said in the video. The driver’s unresponsiveness mirrors cases where passengers are stranded, like a man charged a cancellation fee.
She said the driver then appeared to be heading back toward downtown St. Pete, placing her within a few blocks of where Kewch and Nikki were standing. Rather than go back to their car, Kewch said they decided to try to intercept the driver on foot. She said she used the Find My Location on her phone to track the car’s direction in real time. When she spotted the driver stopped at a red light about a block and a half away, she said they ran toward the car.
“We f——g sprint,” she said. “No f——g way we’re gonna see her sitting at this red light and miss the car.” When they reached the vehicle, @kewch777 said she slowed down and calmly showed the driver her phone with the Find My screen open. She said she told the driver, “My friend left her phone, and your car is in the back of the car. We were tracking it.”
According to Kewch, the driver denied having anyone’s phone. She said she pushed back, telling the driver, “I’m not saying you took it, but it’s in your car.” Shortly after, she said a passenger sitting in the back seat handed the phone through to the front.
The driver allegedly called it “an act of God.” Kewch disagreed. “No, it wasn’t an act of God,” she said. “It was an act of FBI surveillance. We have been chasing you. We have called Domino’s. We have blown up Uber.”
The next morning, Kewch said she received an email from Uber stating that the driver had reported she met them at an agreed-upon location on her own time and had claimed the $20 lost item return fee. Uber reportedly waived the charge for Kewch, but she said that was not the point. “She did not meet us at a location of her choosing on her own time,” she said.
“She met us at a stoplight because we chased her down because she would not respond to anybody.” This echoes other disputes where drivers report passengers, like a driver who refused a child.
Kewch said she left her first-ever negative review for an Uber driver over the incident. She ended the video with a message for drivers. “If you’re an Uber driver, get your f——g voicemail set up,” she said. “That s–t’s not safe.”
The video drew mixed reactions in the comments. One viewer who identified as an Uber driver offered some context, writing, “As a Uber driver if we have another passenger on our screen we can’t see the messages until we have nobody as far as a ride. And sometimes if we have another passenger the app won’t let us receive a phone call through the Uber app…. However when y’all got out of the vehicle she should have checked the back seats I’m sorry that happened to you hopefully you will have a good Uber driver experience next time.”
Others were less sympathetic toward the driver. “I’m so happy I wasn’t with an idiot during this side,” one commenter wrote. Another simply said, “But I love what you did babe.”
Published: Jul 13, 2026 11:59 am