The toddler’s father, 39-year-old Martin Pereira, is in police custody.
The child, Zoey Pereira, suffered fatal burns on Sunday, May 5, when an Audi Quattro stood in flames.
What Happened?
At around 9 p.m. Sunday, officials received a 911 call about a car stopped in the middle of an intersection near JFK airport.Crews found the windows shut, and saw one gas canister in the street and another on the back seat, according to sources cited by the Post.
According to both the Post and Pix11, sources said that the back doors of the cars were chained shut.
The heat from the fire had melted the handle and released the latch, allowing firefighters to open the door and pull the girl out.
Another eyewitness said she saw a man engulfed in flames, running from the scene. The burning man reportedly ran to a nearby pond to put out the fire, before first-responders found him.
“He was on a stretcher, he’s burned,” Silvera told the Post. “He looked white. So burned. With a mask on his face.”
According to the Post, the man sustained second- and third-degree burns and was reportedly in a stable condition the following morning.
‘Should’ve Kept Her and Gone to Jail’
Law enforcement sources said the man and the girl’s mother were engaged in a custody dispute over the girl, according to the New York Daily News. The source said they do not live together and have a history of domestic violence.The girl’s mother, 36-year-old Cherone Coleman, was cited by the Daily News as saying that she had unsuccessfully fought to deny the father visitation rights.
She told the publication she regrets that she did not refuse Pereira his court-mandated visitation last Saturday, adding that she “should’ve kept her and gone to jail.”
Pereira took the child on Saturday, the day before she died in the burning car.
Coleman told the Daily News that she spoke with Pereira shortly before her daughter was killed. She said Pereira told her: “Do I have your attention now, [expletive]? I got your attention now, [expletive]. You’re never going to see your daughter again.”
Crime in the United States
Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).Both studies are based on data up to and including 2017, the most recent year for which complete figures are available.
While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.
Property Crime
The property crime rate fell by 50 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI, and by 69 percent according to BJS.According to the FBI’s preliminary figures for the first half of 2018, property crime rates in the United States dropped by 7.2 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.
Public Perception About Crime
Despite falling long-term trends in both violent crime and property crime, opinion surveys repeatedly show Americans believe that crime is up.Perceptions differed on a national versus local level.