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Leo Rosenthal, 59, was knocked unconscious and had to spend the night in hospital after he took a job in Safety Beach in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula just before 8.30pm yesterday.
Rosenthal has said he knew something was wrong as soon as he arrived at the Safety Beach home.
His female passenger had piles of her possessions packed up and a shirtless man began running towards her as she was about to get into the Uber.
“She jumps in and says ‘drive, drive’, so I got out of there as fast as I could,” Rosenthal has recalled.
But the man jumped in a black Holden Commodore and went on to follow the Uber for 30 kilometres.
Rosenthal said the man tailgated him along the East Link freeway and allegedly reached speeds of 140km/h.
Rosenthal thought he had lost the man when he arrived at a Langwarrin storage facility, where he helped the woman unload her possessions behind a locked gate.
But the man arrived shortly afterwards and began threatening the woman and Rosenthal.
The man jumped the locked gate and then punched Rosenthal three times in the face, knocking him unconscious.
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When Rosenthal woke up, the man had disappeared.
The woman was still there, and he continued to help her unpack her boxes until her mother arrived.
He drove himself to a police station then to hospital, where he spent the night getting stitches.
Rosenthal has said he does not regret sticking by the woman.
“If somebody needs help, you protect them,” he said,
“The last thing I wanted was for her to get hurt.”
Police went to the Safety Beach property this morning.
No arrests have been made but police are still investigating the incident.
