By Michelle Hunter
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — Yolanda Dillion had recently started driving for Uber as a way to make ends meet. The 54-year-old from New Orleans had a master’s degree in sociology from Tulane University and 10 years on the job as a budget analyst with the New Orleans Police Department, relatives said.
“She was just trying to pay her bills and get out of debt,” said Dillion’s cousin, Marlene Riley, 62, who called her a kind and humble person.
But Dillion was unaware that the last passenger she picked up Thursday afternoon had deadly intentions. Just moments after she arrived at his destination, the Travelodge hotel in Harvey, authorities say Brandon Jacobs, 29, attacked and stabbed her at least twice from the back seat of her vehicle before pulling out his cell phone and recording the aftermath.
Jacobs and Dillion did not know each other and there was no motive for the stabbing, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said Friday afternoon at a news conference.
“He woke up yesterday morning and decided he was going to kill someone,” Lopinto said.
‘Uber picked her’
Jacobs was taken into custody Thursday night just outside of his room at the Travelodge in the 2000 block of the West Bank Expressway. He admitted killing Dillion and was booked with second-degree murder, Lopinto said.
Earlier in the day, Jacobs had ordered an Uber that transported him from the hotel to a location in New Orleans. Jacobs intended to kill that first driver but changed his plans when he realized he wouldn’t have ride back to his hotel, Lopinto said.
Instead, Jacobs ordered a second Uber, and Dillion accepted the fare. When investigators asked him why he selected Dillion as his victim, Lopinto said Jacobs replied: “I didn’t pick her. Uber picked her.”
Jacobs published the cell phone video he recorded after the stabbing onto his Facebook account, authorities said. The Sheriff’s Office later worked with the social media company to remove the video, Friday morning.
Jacobs fled the crime scene and made his way back to his room in the hotel.
Investigators reached out to Uber to identify Dillion’s passenger but the company couldn’t immediately provide that information — the fare had to be officially closed using the app on Dillion’s cell phone, Lopinto said. Detectives located the phone in her vehicle and closed the fare, enabling them to eventually identify Jacobs as a suspect.
They determined he was staying at the hotel and arrested him when he emerged from his room to smoke a cigarette, Lopinto said.
“She encountered the wrong person at the wrong time and, unfortunately, she lost her life because of it,” Lopinto said.
Outgoing, friendly soul
Dillion lived with and was a caretaker for her mother, Edna Dillion, 83. “She took good care of me,” Edna Dillion said Friday.
Yolanda Dillion was an only child who was born and raised in New Orleans. She graduated from Marion Abramson High School before earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Xavier University,
An outgoing and friendly soul, Dillion was well known at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church where she was a lector who read scripture during Mass, her mother said. Yolanda Dillion didn’t have any children of her own, but she loved to spoil the little ones who attended the church.
On her kitchen table, Edna Dillion pointed to the dozens of red and green treat bags that Yolanda Dillion had planned to fill and pass out to children at the church for Christmas.
“She was fun-loving. She was still a big kid herself,” Riley said.
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Yolanda Dillion was a breast cancer survivor. Though relatives described her as friendly and outgoing, she was definitely a homebody who mostly spent time with family or at church, they said.
Edna Dillion knew her daughter delievered food for Uber didne’t realize Yolanda Dillion had begun to pick up passengers as well. But she wasn’t comfortable with her daughter’s part-time gig.
“I tried to get her to stop. I didn’t want her to do it,” Edna Dillion said. “But she wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“She didn’t deserve this,” Riley said.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson called Yolanda Dillion an extremely lovely person. Her death hit her team and fellow employees hard, he said.
“She will be dearly missed,” Ferguson said.
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