Arrest report says Las Vegas cabdriver returned to victim’s home after sexual assault
After sexually assaulting an incapacitated passenger, a Las Vegas cabdriver returned to the victim’s house with a bouquet of flowers and started apologizing, according to the man’s arrest report.
The cabdriver, 25-year-old Abdul Based, was arrested Friday.
According to the arrest report, obtained Thursday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Based returned to the victim’s Henderson home three times after the March 6 incident.
On March 9, the woman was in her driveway with her niece when a man with flowers approached her and started apologizing. Her niece told her that he was the same man who came to the house twice earlier that day, according to the report.
The woman, who was not yet aware of the sexual assault, grabbed a baseball bat and threatened the man until he left, according to the report.
Later that day, Las Vegas police called the woman to inform her they were investigating a report that she had been sexually assaulted while passed out in a cab. The woman “became extremely upset over the phone,” according to the report.
The Review-Journal typically does not identify victims of sexual assault.
On March 5, the woman went to Marquee Nightclub at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. She remembered having several drinks at the club, becoming nauseous and sitting on a couch while drinking water. The woman told police that she did not remember anything after that, according to the report.
She woke up the morning of March 6 and noticed her phone was missing. She tried to remember what happened the night before, but it was not until March 8 that she noticed a $92 charge from Lucky Cab Co. on her bank card. She then contacted the taxi company about her lost or stolen phone, police said.
The cab company’s management discovered the sexual assault while reviewing cab surveillance footage in an attempt to find the woman’s phone, according to the arrest report. The driver was suspended and then fired.
When management confronted Based about the incident, according to the arrest report, he said he “would give her some money to make it ok.”
The surveillance footage from the cab shows Based picking up the woman from The Cosmopolitan just before 4:45 a.m. on March 6. The woman passes out in the back seat, according to the arrest report, and Based can be seen reaching back and touching her inner thigh.
A couple minutes later, Based pulls the cab over on the 215 Beltway near Windmill Lane and tells the woman to get in the front seat. Based can be seen sexually assaulting the woman multiple times during the drive and while parked in her driveway, according to the report.
When questioned by police, Based said he “made a mistake, because a married man should not be doing this sort of thing,” according to the report. He also said it would “be okay for a single man, but not someone who was married.”
A detective then explained “that what he had done was not okay for anyone to do, regardless of being single or married,” according to the report. The detective further explained “that the victim was unconscious and unable to consent to what he had done, or able to fight him off.”
Based is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on one count of sexual assault.
Contact Lawren Linehan at llinehan@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0381. Follow @lawrenlinehan on Twitter.
