A 24-year-old man was arrested Thursday night after police say he assaulted an Uber driver and stole her car.

Police responded to the intersection of Massachusetts and Columbus avenues at around 6:30 p.m. Thursday for a report of a carjacking. There, officers encountered a “highly distressed” Uber driver, Boston Police said in a statement

A witness told police they saw the Uber driver struggling with a person in the back seat of the vehicle. The driver managed to escape the vehicle and screamed for help as the suspect moved from the back seat to the driver’s seat and fled the scene, the witness told police, according to the statement.

The Uber driver told police she picked up the suspect in Cambridge. Then, at the intersection of Massachusetts and Columbus avenues, she felt a cord or wire tighten around her neck, preventing her from breathing, police said.

Police used the driver’s phone, which was still inside the stolen vehicle, to track its location to the area of Stanwood Street and Blue Hill Avenue. Officers stopped the vehicle and arrested the suspect, identified by police as Christopher Dawkins, 24, of Dorchester.

Dawkins will be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court’s central division on charges of carjacking, strangulation/suffocation, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and receiving a stolen motor vehicle.