Fake Uber driver gets life for brutal murder of student

He was every parent’s worst nightmare.

The fake Uber driver who drove a college student away to her death.

The abduction and murder of a South Carolina college student in March 2019 shocked America after it emerged that she had stepped into the wrong car, mistaking it for the Uber she had ordered.

Nathaniel Rowland was this week sentenced to life in prison for killing Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old University of South Carolina senior

The sentencing of Rowland, 27, came the same day jurors found him guilty of the horrific crime.

Josephson, a New Jersey native, stepped into Rowland’s vehicle after a night out in Columbia’s Five Points entertainment district. She had apparently neglected to check on the Uber app that his was indeed her assigned vehicle and assumed he would take her back home, prosecutors said.

However, the tragic student was later found dead about 65 miles away with 120 stab wounds.

“Her dreams were my dreams, and her death was my death. I close my eyes, and I feel what she endured at his hands,” the victim’s mother, Marci Josephson, said at Tuesday’s sentencing.

During the week-long trial, experts called by the prosecution linked Josephson’s blood to the inside of Rowland’s car and to the knife allegedly used in the murder.

The victim’s blood was also found on Rowland’s bandanna and a sock, experts testified, as well as on cleaning supplies in the garbage behind his ex-girlfriend’s house.

The judge who sentenced Rowland said Tuesday: “She obviously put up an amazing fight against you and left a sufficient trail for the jury to see what you did.”

Rowland maintained his innocence before being sentenced. His attorneys pointed out that scientists weren’t absolutely certain Rowland’s DNA was on the knife.

They also noted that none of Rowland’s DNA was found on her body — and he didn’t have any visible signs of being in a fight, despite the victim appearing to have put up a struggle.