Updated 3:36 p.m.

An Uber driver in southern Oregon is suspected of locking a passenger inside his car and raping her, according to police and court records.

Antonio Gonzalez-Salinas, 51, was arraigned Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree rape, kidnapping and sexual abuse.

He remains held in the Jackson County Jail on a $350,000 bail, records show.

“What has been described is awful and something no one should ever have to go through," an Uber spokesman said in an email Wednesday. “We’re cooperating with law enforcement to support their investigation.”

In a recent study, the company reported 3,045 sexual assaults during its rides in the United States in 2018.

Antonio Gonzalez-Salinas. (Jackson County Sheriff's Office)

Police said Gonzalez-Salinas had picked the woman up early Sunday in downtown Medford after she had been out drinking with friends.

The Uber driver was supposed to take the woman, 21, to the house of another acquaintance, according to Medford police. But he never did.

The woman’s friends became worried when they learned she didn’t arrive at her destination and tried calling her phone, said Lt. Mike Budreau, a police spokesman.

Gonzalez-Salinas answered the woman’s phone and claimed he was having trouble finding the house, according to police.

Subsequent calls to the woman’s phone went unanswered, prompting her friends and a relative to search for her using the phone’s location data, Budreau said.

They eventually found the woman sobbing inside Gonzalez-Salinas’ black Lexus a few blocks from her acquaintance’s house, police said. The Uber driver was nowhere to be found.

During their investigation, detectives determined the driver had repeatedly locked the woman’s door while he sexually assaulted her, Budreau said.

Police later arrested Gonzalez-Salinas at his home, where they also recovered the woman’s phone.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

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