The April roadside discovery led deputies to an injured rideshare driver, a stolen vehicle and a suspect whose mental condition later became central in court.
GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Greenville County case that would later produce allegations of an 11-wound stabbing, a stolen Lyft driver’s car and a renewed bond fight began with a passerby reporting an injured man near Haywood Road and East North Street on the afternoon of April 22.
Deputies were dispatched at about 2:30 p.m. and found the man with a visible head wound, according to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office. They provided aid and began working backward from the roadside scene. The man was eventually identified in local reporting as Sergii Savchenko, a rideshare driver who had accepted a pickup from an apartment complex in the East North Street area. The investigation quickly turned from an assault response into a search for the person accused of attacking him and taking his vehicle.
Authorities said Naziyha La’Nay Weatherall, then 22, had requested the ride. Savchenko arrived to pick her up and began the trip. His daughter, Anastasiia Savchenko, later said her father greeted the passenger and started driving. She told FOX Carolina that her father speaks limited English and that Weatherall had been sitting behind him. The daughter said Savchenko told her that he was attacked after the trip was underway. Investigators alleged Weatherall stabbed him repeatedly before taking his vehicle.
The sheriff’s office said Weatherall used the vehicle in an attempt to leave the scene but was located shortly afterward. Early news reports did not provide a lengthy account of how deputies found her, and reliable public sources reviewed for this story do not establish a detailed pursuit or arrest sequence. What they do establish is that she was taken into custody and that Savchenko was taken for medical treatment. The restraint in that record is important: the core sequence is documented, but many minute-by-minute details have not been publicly released.
The first court appearance followed quickly. Local reporting said Weatherall was denied bond on charges then described as attempted murder, armed robbery and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. At that hearing, Savchenko’s daughter said her father remained in the intensive care unit but was in stable condition. The criminal case was already serious, but the full extent of his injuries was still emerging. The public account at that stage was centered on the roadside discovery, the alleged attack and the fact that the driver had survived.
Within days, the picture became clearer. Anastasiia Savchenko said her father had spent two days in the hospital and suffered 11 stab wounds to his head, face and back. He was released and returned home, where his wife cared for him. His daughter identified him publicly and said he drove for both Uber and Lyft, though he had been driving for Lyft during the April 22 trip. She also said their family were Ukrainian refugees who had fled the war about four years earlier and resettled in the United States.
That family history changed the way the aftermath was understood without changing the allegations themselves. Anastasiia said she had felt safe before the attack but no longer had the same sense of security. She also said her father intended to keep driving, even though she did not want him to return to the work. Her statements were not evidence about Weatherall’s guilt, but they documented the continuing impact of the incident on a family that had already relocated across continents and was relying in part on rideshare driving as everyday work.
On April 27, the sheriff’s office added another fact that would later become central to Weatherall’s defense: authorities confirmed that she had been experiencing a mental health episode at the time of the incident. The early confirmation did not spell out a legal defense or resolve questions of criminal responsibility. It did, however, foreshadow the arguments that would surface months later when Weatherall returned to court and her attorney asked a judge to release her to a treatment setting.
Court-related reporting said competency and observation evaluations were ordered in June. Those steps signaled that Weatherall’s mental condition was being formally examined within the criminal process. By the time of an Aug. 28 bond hearing, her lawyer described the issue in more detail. The defense said Weatherall had diagnoses that included schizophrenia, had been suffering severe delusions and believed she was being watched, listened to and threatened. The attorney said she called for the Lyft because she wanted to go to a police station and report what she believed was happening.
The defense said Weatherall’s mother had called the police station ahead of time to say her daughter was coming. According to the attorney, Weatherall’s crisis intensified during the ride and she began to believe she was being trafficked. The lawyer said she panicked. The defense also said Weatherall had since been medicated and was stable and competent. It asked the judge to allow relatives and a social worker to arrange her placement in a dedicated treatment facility. Those assertions were advocacy by the defense, not findings that the alleged attack was legally excused.
Prosecutors opposed release and brought the chronology back to its most violent point. A solicitor told the court Savchenko had simply been doing his job when he was stabbed 11 times and that his car was taken afterward. Savchenko’s wife appeared at the hearing because, she said, he remained too emotionally and mentally shaken to attend. She described the alleged conduct as extremely violent and emphasized that her husband had not been seeking a confrontation. The state argued that the facts alleged in the case showed an extreme danger to the community.
Weatherall’s mother also addressed the court, apologized to Savchenko’s family and said her daughter was not the person depicted by the allegations. She asked the judge to consider Weatherall’s mental health and what the defense described as a lack of prior criminal history. The judge again denied bond and ordered Weatherall to remain in custody pending a psychological evaluation that was scheduled for September. The ruling left the prosecution’s safety concerns and the defense’s treatment request unresolved in favor of continued detention.
The wording of the charges has varied in public reports. Early local coverage referred to armed robbery, while later reporting citing Greenville County jail records described a charge of carjacking resulting in bodily injury, alongside attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The difference should not be casually reconciled by assumption. Criminal charges can be amended, replaced or described differently as a case develops, and the precise operative counts are best established by the most current court record.
Lyft said after the attack that it had reached out to Savchenko and his family, permanently removed the rider accounts involved from its platform and was assisting law enforcement. That response came after deputies had already connected the injured driver to a rideshare pickup and after Weatherall had been detained. It became part of the case’s aftermath rather than its investigative starting point, which remained the passerby’s report of a wounded man beside a Greenville-area road.
What began with a passerby finding an injured driver beside a Greenville road has since moved almost entirely into the court system. Deputies made an arrest, Savchenko survived, and judges have twice declined to release Weatherall on bond. The next confirmed procedural development was a psychological evaluation scheduled after the August hearing, but no reliable public report reviewed for this update establishes what followed from it.
Author note: Last updated October 17, 2026.