🌎 Resumen en español · traducción automática
Un conductor de Lyft en Lexington, Abdulqayum Wardak, fue arrestado y procesado por agresión a una pasajera, pero los registros de la aplicación demostraban que nunca recogió a esa pasajera en su vehículo, lo que ha llevado a que presente una demanda civil federal contra el detective Franklin Epley y el gobierno local. Según la demanda, la noche del 21 de septiembre de 2024, una mujer solicitó un viaje desde el Stagger Inn pero nunca apareció en el punto de recogida, y Wardak canceló la carrera como no presentada después de esperar cinco minutos, tal como consta en los registros de Lyft que el detective fotografió el primer día. Wardak, un refugiado afgano que asistió a fuerzas estadounidenses, demanda daños compensatorios y punitivos por un millón de dólares y solicita un juicio con jurado.
Traducción y resumen generados por IA a partir del artículo en inglés. Puede contener errores; consulte el texto original.
A Lexington Lyft driver who was jailed and prosecuted for a passenger assault — one the ride-hail app’s own records showed he never had the passenger in his car to commit — has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the Lexington police detective who charged him and against the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
Abdulqayum Wardak, an Afghan national admitted to the United States as a refugee after assisting American forces in Afghanistan, filed the suit July 20 in U.S. District Court in Lexington (Wardak v. Epley et al., No. 5:26-cv-00277). It names Detective Franklin Epley individually, LFUCG, and up to ten unidentified officers and supervisors, and demands compensatory and punitive damages — the civil cover sheet lists a $1 million demand — plus a jury trial. The case is assigned to District Judge S. Chad Meredith.
The complaint’s central allegation is stark: the same Lyft screens that gave police Wardak’s name also proved his innocence — and Detective Epley photographed them on day one.
The night of September 22, 2024
According to the complaint, Wardak spent the night of September 21–22, 2024 driving for Lyft in downtown Lexington in a white 2019 Toyota Camry, completing about a dozen rides. At 3:19 a.m., a woman — identified in the filing only as C.Q. — requested a ride from 269 W. Main St., the Stagger Inn, to her home on Lincoln Avenue. The app paired her with Wardak.
Lyft’s records, as recounted in the complaint, document what happened next minute by minute: Wardak arrived at the pickup spot at 3:22 a.m., triggering a “your driver is here” notification to C.Q.’s phone. He messaged her — “Hi, where are you?” — and placed a call through the app. She never appeared. At 3:25 a.m. Lyft warned her that “Abdulqayum is leaving soon” and that she would be charged a no-show fee. At 3:27 a.m., having waited the five minutes Lyft requires, Wardak cancelled the ride as a no-show from the pickup location; Lyft charged C.Q. a $6.63 cancellation fee and credited Wardak a $2.00 wait fee. At 3:29 a.m. he accepted a different fare, dropped that passenger on Red Mile Road by about 3:39 a.m., passed a traffic camera on South Broadway around 3:40, and ended his driving session at 3:44 a.m., consistent with arriving at his own apartment.
Around 4:19 a.m., Lexington police were dispatched to Richmond Road and Lincoln Avenue. C.Q. reported that a man she believed to be her Lyft driver had pulled over before reaching her destination, demanded $100 or sex, climbed into the back seat, and forcibly kissed and groped her before she escaped. During the assault she blindly dialed a recent number and reached her father, who listened in and was at the scene when officers arrived.
The complaint is explicit on one point: Wardak does not allege that C.Q. fabricated her report. His claims are aimed at the investigation that followed it — which, if the complaint’s account is right, means whoever actually assaulted her was never pursued.
What the detective knew on day one
That afternoon — beginning around 12:41 p.m. on September 22, per the complaint — Epley personally photographed the screens of C.Q.’s phone. The screens he captured and uploaded to the case file included the Lyft trip screen reading “Canceled · Sep 22, 2024, 3:27 AM” and “Your ride was cancelled by the driver Abdulqayum”; the $6.63 no-show fee; the ride-history entry “3:27 AM · Canceled by driver”; and the lock-screen notifications from 3:22 and 3:25 a.m.
In other words, the lawsuit alleges, the sole source of Wardak’s identification — the Lyft pairing — was known to the detective from the first day to also document that the paired driver never picked C.Q. up.
Two days later, in a recorded interview with Epley, C.Q. said she placed the call to her father at 3:38 a.m. and stayed on the line six to eight minutes — a window during which, per Lyft’s records and traffic-camera footage, Wardak was driving a different passenger miles away. In the same interview she described the assailant’s car as a silver, small four-door sedan and the man as possibly in his 30s. Wardak’s car was a white Toyota Camry; he was 26.
The affidavit
Five days after the assault, Epley swore out a criminal complaint for an arrest warrant, charging first-degree sexual abuse and fourth-degree assault. The affidavit — attached to the lawsuit as Exhibit A — states: “I found that [C.Q.] had been picked up at 269 W. Main Street at 0319 hours, and the ride was cancelled at 0327 hours,” and that after she escaped, “he cancelled her ride and fled the scene.”
The lawsuit calls that statement flatly false — no pickup ever happened, per the very notifications and receipts Epley cited as his source — and says the affidavit recast a GPS-documented no-show cancellation at the pickup point, two miles from the scene, as post-assault flight. It also fixed the offense time at 3:25 a.m., “the very minute a Lyft notification in Detective Epley’s possession showed Mr. Wardak still parked at the pickup location… waiting for a rider who never came.” The affidavit told the judge Wardak “matches the description provided by” C.Q. while omitting the age mismatch, the car mismatch, the cancellation records, and the 3:38 a.m. phone-call timeline, the complaint says. A Fayette District judge signed the warrant on the strength of it on September 27, 2024.
Wardak was arrested at his home on September 30, 2024, and spent seven days in the Fayette County Detention Center before making a $5,000 cash bond. Pretrial Services scored him at zero — the lowest possible risk — with no criminal history of any kind.
Local television covered the arrest. “Lexington rideshare driver accused of sexually assaulting passenger,” read WKYT’s October 1 headline; Fox 56 ran a similar story. Both recited the affidavit’s account. Neither the dismissal that followed, nor this lawsuit, had been reported anywhere before this article.
A kidnapping charge, then a quiet dismissal
On October 22, 2024, Wardak’s defense produced his driver-side Lyft records to police and prosecutors, including Lyft customer-support confirmation in writing that the ride was cancelled and the rider marked a no-show, according to the complaint.
Three weeks later, Epley appeared before the Fayette County grand jury as the sole witness listed on the indictment, the complaint says. The grand jury returned the sexual-abuse and assault charges — and, by direct submission, added kidnapping, a Class B felony carrying up to 20 years. An additional $10,000 bail was imposed.
Not until March 14, 2025 — nearly six months after the arrest — did Epley serve a search warrant on Lyft, according to the complaint. The certified records Lyft returned “corroborated Mr. Wardak’s innocence in every particular.” Four months after that, the Commonwealth moved to dismiss the indictment without prejudice, acknowledging Wardak had “plausible defenses.” Wardak objected — he asked the court to make the dismissal with prejudice given the exculpatory record — but on July 21, 2025, Fayette Circuit Judge Diane Minnifield sustained the Commonwealth’s motion. No charge has been refiled.
By then Wardak had spent ten months under felony indictment: bond conditions, travel restrictions, the loss of his ability to drive — or even ride — on rideshare platforms, and, because his refugee status and protection from removal to Afghanistan depend on his record, what the complaint calls “a prolonged and terrifying threat to his immigration status and personal safety including potential death.”
The claims
The lawsuit brings eight counts: federal malicious-prosecution and unlawful-seizure claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; a “judicial deception” count over the warrant affidavit; a claim for continuing the detention and prosecution after probable cause dissolved; failure-to-intervene and supervisory-liability counts against the unnamed officers; a municipal-liability (Monell) count against LFUCG alleging a failure to train detectives on corroborating suspect identifications drawn from app pairings — “including the elementary step of obtaining the platform’s records before charging” — and a “custom or practice of charging first and verifying later in sex-offense investigations”; and state-law malicious-prosecution and abuse-of-process claims.
Wardak is represented by Lexington attorneys Jonas Bastien and Erik S. Young, who also defended him in the criminal case. Summonses for Epley and LFUCG were issued July 21. No response has yet been filed, and the allegations in the complaint are one side of a case the defendants have not yet answered in court.
Sources
- Complaint, Wardak v. Epley et al., No. 5:26-cv-00277-SCM (E.D. Ky. filed July 20, 2026), Doc. 1
- Exhibit A — Complaint Warrant No. E03410004849129 with sworn complaint of Det. Franklin Epley, Fayette District Court (signed Sept. 27, 2024)
- Exhibit B — Order to Dismiss (without prejudice), Commonwealth v. Wardak, No. 24-CR-00922, Fayette Circuit Court, 7th Div. (entered July 21, 2025)
- Docket, Wardak v. Epley et al. — CourtListener / RECAP
- “Lexington rideshare driver accused of sexually assaulting passenger,” WKYT (Oct. 1, 2024)
- “Lyft driver accused of sexually assaulting passenger in Lexington,” Fox 56 (Oct. 2024)
This article was drafted with AI assistance (Claude Fable 5) and reviewed and finalized for publication by The Lexington Times. It is based on the complaint and exhibits in Wardak v. Epley et al., No. 5:26-cv-00277 (E.D. Ky.), including the September 2024 Fayette District Court complaint warrant and the July 2025 Fayette Circuit Court order of dismissal, and on contemporaneous television coverage of the arrest. Allegations from the civil complaint are attributed as such; the defendants have not yet responded in court.
Republishing: This is original Lexington Times reporting, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. You may republish this article, in full and unaltered, for free — including commercially — with credit to The Lexington Times and a link to the original.
