Uber driver accused of raping Villanova student denies allegations, vows to fight case in court, lawyer says

A Montgomery County man who prosecutors say raped a Villanova University student who hired him through Uber to drive her to her dorm denies the allegations and will vigorously fight the charges in court, his lawyer said Thursday.

Mirvan Dinler, of Trappe, “should and will be vindicated,” lawyer Shaka Johnson said, because there are “glaring, glaring cracks” in the woman’s account of what happened that night.

“This case is about credibility, who you believe,” Johnson said after Dinler’s preliminary hearing in Newtown Square. “So far you’ve only heard one story ... but there will be a different version coming shortly, believe me.”

Assistant District Attorney Danielle Gallaher declined to comment after the hearing before District Judge Sloan Walker.

Dinler, 26, was charged with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and related crimes on Oct. 3, in connection with the reported rape a month earlier on the university’s campus in Radnor.

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The woman, a senior at Villanova, testified Thursday that she had been drinking with friends in a dorm room and later an apartment before the group’s planned trip to Warehouse on Watts, a bar in North Philadelphia.

In about two hours, the woman said, she drank three glasses of wine and two shots, an amount of alcohol that was unusually large for her. After arriving at the bar in the city, the woman said she felt dizzy and ill, and decided to return home.

“I knew I wasn’t feeling good, and I didn’t want my friends to have to babysit me,” she said.

She ordered an Uber on her phone, and Dinler arrived in his Toyota Prius to pick her up, according to testimony Thursday. The woman said she doesn’t remember much afterward, aside from texting one of her friends and apologizing for having to leave so abruptly.

Her next memory, she said, was waking up, drunk and disoriented, as Dinler raped her inside her dorm room. She said she was too terrified to fight back or call out for help.

“I decided to lay there and let it happen because he was a stranger, and I didn’t know what was going on,” or whether he would harm her further if she resisted, she said.

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Investigators said surveillance footage captured Dinler helping walk the woman to her dorm, and that her student-issued keycard unlocked her dorm room door minutes later.

Dinler left after the assault, the woman said, but returned moments later, banging loudly on her door. She tried to ignore him, hoping he would leave, until her floor’s resident assistant told her to come outside.

Dinler had told the RA he would not leave until the woman paid him to cover the costs of cleaning up his car after she vomited on the ride back from Philadelphia.

She handed Dinler her phone and paid him through an app, she said, because it was clear to her that he wouldn’t leave otherwise.

Dinler’s attorney, Johnson, said his client denies the allegations. He, too, was a student majoring in computer science at a different college, Johnson said, working to support himself and his wife by driving for Uber.

Judge Walker ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to county court, where Dinler will be arraigned on Jan. 2.