Uber driver kicks out lesbian couple for kissing
Raw video: Couple says driver kicked them out of his car for kissing during ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
An Uber driver who kicked a lesbian couple out of his cab for kissing had his license suspended by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission on Tuesday.
“It’s 2018 in New York City, and this isn’t the way we live anymore,” TLC spokesman Allen Fromberg said.
The couple — Emma Pichl, 24, and Alex Iovine, 26 — were at the Pig Beach bar in Gowanus, Brooklyn, on Saturday evening when they hailed an Uber to take them to the East Village.
“We got over the Manhattan Bridge into the city. We were sitting on opposite sides of the back seat. At one point we leaned over and pecked kiss, very fast,” Pichl told The Post on Monday.
Five minutes later, the driver, Ahmad El Boutari, “pulled the cab over and said, ‘You should not do that … do not do that,'” according to Pichl.
“He started yelling at us that we were disrespectful and inappropriate and that he wants us out of his car,” Pichl said. “We were going back and forth trying to understand.”
A video posted to YouTube by Iovine titled “Uber driver kicks 2 girls out of his car for being gay” shows the moments after the Uber driver booted the women.
El Boutari insists in the video that kissing is “illegal.”
Uber has removed El Boutari’s access to its app, saying it does not tolerate discrimination. It said it is investigating.