Knoxville, TN (WOKI) An East Tennessee man, driving for the popular rideshare service Lyft, is convicted Friday of raping a passenger.
Officials with District Attorney General Charme Allen’s office say 44-year-old Christopher Wayne Stanifer picked the victim up from Drake’s, a restaurant on Morrell Road in Knoxville, around 2:00 a.m. in September of 2020.
In court records, the victim stated she was not sure how she ended up in the back seat of Stanifer’s car with Stanifer having sex with her and that she was too intoxicated to have given consent, prompting her to report the incident to the Knoxville Police Department.
“It is critical to understand that consent is the presence of a ‘yes’ and not just the absence of a ‘no,’ and the ‘yes’ must be made by someone who is not so impaired that they cannot fully understand what they are consenting to,” said District Attorney General Charme Allen.
Stanifer was convicted of rape and public indecency.
