Exclusive: Man who gave Mackenzie Lueck Lyft ride before she vanished breaks silence
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Michael Canada was one of the last people to see MacKenzie Lueck alive before she vanished in the early morning hours of June 17, 2019.
The Lyft driver stayed out of the spotlight until he was cleared by police.
“It really tore me up,” he told 2News, nearly eight months after that unforgettable ride with the University of Utah student who vanished, then was found dead in Logan Canyon after a high-profile search that drew national attention.
RELATED: Full timeline: The disappearance, search, and murder of MacKenzie Lueck
Canada said there was nothing unusual about the ride until the small talk turned to comments about something being strange.
“... and she said, ‘not as strange as where you are dropping me off in the middle of a park.’ She actually brought that up and said it was odd she was being dropped off there,” he recalled.
Canada said he’d dropped off customers at strange places before. When Lueck told him she was meeting a friend at the park who would pick her up, he said he gave no more thought to the fact that it was a strange meeting place at 2 a.m.
When he pulled into Hatch Park in North Salt Lake, there was one car on the parking lot. He described it as a Subaru.
He parked in the stall next to the Subaru, grabbed Lueck’s bag from his trunk, and put it in the hatchback of the Subaru.
Then he noticed what he assumed to be a woman in the car. He saw one person with dark curly hair in the vehicle.
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“I heard a faint voice,” he said assuming it was a woman’s voice.
Canada said the faintness of the voice also led him to believe it was a woman in the vehicle.
Days later, the police interviewed him. After that, he learned the suspect was a man. He saw the mugshot of 31-year-old Ayoola Ajayi in news coverage and did not remember seeing him in the car.
Canada said he’s still driving for Lyft and often thinks about MacKenzie Lueck.
I was the last person to see her. I thought, 'Could I have done something different? Or is there anything I could have done?' I played it over and over again. I made sure she was OK, so it gave me relief to say, ‘OK, I did everything I could.
