Oakland Uber Drivers Robbed at Gunpoint in Separate Incidents. Both Caught on Video.

Oakland has racked up two documented, video-recorded violent robberies of Uber drivers in recent months, with both captured on camera.

The more recent incident, reported by the NY Post and the California Post, occurred around 4 a.m. on a Friday at the Oakland Marriott City Center, an upscale downtown hotel. Surveillance footage shows a white car pulling alongside the driver's gray SUV while a second vehicle positioned itself ahead. Four masked individuals jumped out with guns drawn. Three went to the driver's side, forced the door open, and struck the victim in the head ten times with their pistols. They took his wallet and cell phone, then fled. Oakland Police later found one of the getaway vehicles abandoned on Castro Street. A witness reported the suspects transferred to a second car last seen heading east on the 580 freeway. Officers recovered a round of ammunition at the scene. The victim refused an ambulance and drove himself to the hospital.

The earlier incident, covered by CBS News San Francisco (KPIX), involved Uber driver Bimal Thapa Magar on East 17th Street near 23rd Avenue. Dash cam video captured the passengers making small talk. One of them noticed the camera and asked Thapa Magar where he was from before one pulled a gun roughly six minutes into the ride. They ordered him to stop, dragged him out of his Honda Accord Hybrid, forced him to lie on the ground, threw his camera into the street, and drove off in his car. Oakland Police later recovered the vehicle with the front end demolished and all four tires flat. Thapa Magar was left in the road without a phone or a car and used a nearby store's phone to call 911.

What It Cost Bimal Thapa Magar

Thapa Magar told KPIX he is still in trauma, unable to return to work, and worried he can't make rent or send money home to his parents in Nepal. "I feel like they are targeting poor people like me, immigrants from other countries," he said.

Uber deactivated the riders' accounts after the carjacking and issued a statement: "Bimal's reported experience is terrifying. We have been in contact with him to offer support." The company said that under California's Proposition 22, Thapa Magar qualifies for financial assistance covering medical expenses and lost income while he can't work.

Prop 22 support is real, but it doesn't replace a destroyed car or the psychological cost of being violently carjacked.

Oakland's Ongoing Public Safety Problem

U.S. Senator Barbara Lee has not been immune to the crime wave herself. In February, a thief broke into her office and stole a city-owned black SUV, according to the NY Post.

The city's official data claims crime rates have dropped. Critics, including the people who live there, aren't buying it. A recent survey cited by the NY Post found that 92.1% of Oakland's Black respondents identified crime and public safety as their top concern, the highest level recorded for any issue among any demographic group surveyed. A community telling its government something isn't working carries weight.

The Counterargument Worth Taking Seriously

Some argue that media coverage of individual violent incidents, particularly when concentrated on a single city, inflates perception of danger beyond what the aggregate numbers support. Oakland's official crime statistics do show declines in certain categories in recent periods. Advocates for the city point out that sustained economic disinvestment, not permissiveness, drives crime and that sensationalized coverage discourages the investment that would actually reduce it.

Media framing matters, and cherry-picking brutal incidents without context can distort public understanding.

But two Uber drivers, two guns, one pistol-whipped ten times, one left in the street without a car or phone are documented events with video evidence. And 92.1% of Black Oakland residents, the people most directly affected by crime in the city, saying public safety is their number-one concern carries more weight than city hall's press releases about declining statistics.

What Happens Next

As of June 13, 2026, no arrests have been reported in either the Marriott robbery or the Thapa Magar carjacking, based on available sources. Ground News notes that the Marriott robbery story received coverage exclusively from right-leaning outlets. No center or left outlets picked it up. A driver pistol-whipped ten times at a downtown hotel at 4 a.m. is a public safety fact. The absence of broader coverage doesn't make it less real for the man who drove himself to the hospital.

The unresolved question is whether Oakland will produce any suspects in either case and whether Thapa Magar, still unable to work months after the carjacking, will see any accountability for the people who destroyed his livelihood.