A New York man who chained his car doors shut and burned his 3-year-old daughter alive inside the car has died from burn injuries eight months later.
Martin Periera waged a bitter custody battle with Cherone Coleman over their daughter, Zoey Pereira. The custody case ended in tragedy on a cold night in May 2019.
Moments before the tragedy, Pereira told Coleman: “You’ll never see your daughter again.”
On May 5, Pereira, 39, placed Zoey in her car seat in the back of his 2008 Audi A6 and drove to an intersection in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood of Queens, NY.
Pereira chained the rear doors shut and poured gasoline inside the car. He ignited the gasoline and fled the car. A propane tank in the trunk and 2 gas containers fed the flames.
Little Zoey was burned alive in the back seat of the car. Periera, a construction worker, unwittingly set himself on fire.
He jumped into a nearby pond to put out the flames on his clothes. When paramedics found him hiding behind a tree not far from the burning car, he was stripped down to his underwear and suffering from second- and third-degree burns to 70 percent of his body, according to the NY Post.
