We also don’t know what the Lyft driver did. I don’t know how the system works. I know he was looking for a new fare instantly, but did he get one and leave the park instantly? My thought is that his presence isn’t too compatible with an attack, unless AA felt confident that he could attack so effectively that the Lyft driver wouldn’t notice, even if he looked up, and looked into AA’s car.
I wonder how close the Lyft driver parked. Wouldn’t it make sense to pull up alongside the other car?
I recently drove for Lyft for a few months in the greater Salt Lake City area. For me, the BEST, busiest time to drive was between about 11 PM to 7am. I almost always had consistant fares during those times and there is an option in the app that is automatically turned on, which lets the app add a new person to your queue while you are still driving the previous passenger. You don't even have to accept it. Its automatic. At 3 am, it's very likely that would happen if that option was not purposefully turned off because the majority of drivers are not online at that time. If that happened, as soon as he hit "drop off" for Mackenzie, the new fare would pop-up and he would need to get going.
If it was me, before dropping someone off in a park at that time, I would personally ask if she knew who she was meeting, but that's not necessary as a driver.
Once I had a younger woman ask me to drop her off at an apartment building she had obviously never been to before for a party in the middle of the night. I chose to stay and wait a few minutes to make sure she found her friends before leaving but in order to do so, I had to go offline in my driving app so i didn't get a new fare. That said, if I had already had another in the queue, I would have had to leave immediately in order to keep a good reputation (you need to keep above a 4.5* or risk being let go). Also, you can sometimes receive bonuses based on back-to-back rides so I am guessing a lot of drivers wouldn't want to log out and lose that.
I imagine the Lyft driver pulled-up next to the suspect's car. If her luggage was in the back, many drivers would try to help her with her luggage. Most people declined my offer of help though. I always wondered if it was because then they might feel more obligated to tip. If she declined, the driver would likely say bye and thank you, maybe watch to make sure she was able to start getting her stuff in the car, and the turn his attention to his phone to hit the "drop-off" button. If he had another fare in the queue, the GPS would immediately pop-up and give him an ETA. He might study it for a second to figure out where he is headed, glance up and wave goodbye, and be off.
