Taxi hailing service dismisses two staff and suspends hitching nationwide amid public anger following death of 20-year-old woman and driver’s arrest
Didi Chuxing, China’s largest taxi hailing service provider, has said it will suspend its hitching service on Monday, following Friday’s second murder of a female passenger in three months – and admitted it failed to investigate a complaint a day earlier from another woman about the driver accused of the killing.
The halt of the company’s “hitch” function, which allows car owners to provide taxi services, came in response to public anger and will take effect nationwide. Known as China’s answer to Uber, Didi has also sacked two senior members of staff and begun an internal assessment of the service, it said in a statement on Sunday.
Its reaction came a day after police in Yueqing, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, said they had found the body of a 20-year-old female surnamed Zhao and arrested a Didi driver who confessed to her rape and murder on Friday.
According to the police’s official microblog, Zhao had entered a Didi carpool vehicle at 1pm on Friday, and sent a message asking a friend for help at around 2pm before losing contact.
The police said that they found the suspect, a 27-year-old driver named Zhong, at about 4am on Saturday, and that an investigation was continuing.
Following the incident, Zhejiang province’s transport authority ordered Didi to suspend its hitching service there while the company addressed safety issues.
In May, another woman, aged 21, was raped and killed in Zhengzhou city, in central China, allegedly by an unregistered Didi driver whose body was later found in a river.
