An autopsy determined that the woman had died from asphyxia.
A 33-year-old man in the US who was caught on video dumping his pregnant girlfriend's dead body on the side of an expressway in New York has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the killing. According to a press release, the man, identified as Goey Charles, was found guilty in November of one count of second-degree murder in the October 2020 killing of 29-year-old Vanessa Pierre. He was arrested 3 days after Ms Pierre's body was found on Horace Harding Expressway in Bayside, Queens.
"We asked for the maximum sentence because of the brutality of the crime and the defendant's remorseless discarding of the lifeless body of his girlfriend, the woman who was soon to be the mother of his child. The sentence does not bring Vanessa back, but it achieves justice in her memory," Queens District Attorney Melina Katz said in a release.
According to the New York Post, Goey Charles' conviction came after surveillance footage showed him dragging Ms Pierre's lifeless body from a car and dumping her on the side of an expressway on the morning of October 23, 2020. The New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison shared the clip on Twitter. "On October 23rd in the confines of the 111th precinct, 29-year-old Vanessa Pierre and her unborn baby were found deceased laying facedown on the sidewalk off of Horace Harding Expressway," he wrote in the caption.
In the clip, at first Ms Pierre could be seen moving around the backseat of her car. However, about an hour later, the 33-year-old man was seen exiting the vehicle, dragging her lifeless body behind him before dumping her on the sidewalk. He was also seen getting back in the driver's seat of the vehicle, which was registered in Ms Pierre's name.
The woman's body was later discovered by a bus driver, with a pair of grey sweatpants wrapped around her neck. An autopsy determined that she had died from asphyxia due to compression of the neck.
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According to the Post, Ms Pierre was six months pregnant with Charles' child at the time of the incident. "She loved him and she wanted a family but I told her this man is not it," her sister, Melissa Pierre, told the outlet in 2020. She never got "into altercations with anybody" or even raised her voice, her sister said, adding that "she was very excited about the baby".
Now, on Wednesday, almost 3 years after the incident, Charles was convicted of the murder in the second degree and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison by Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder.