Excited and beyond happy to become a mother, Vanessa Pierre, had picked out a name for her baby girl while working as nurse practitioner.
However, Pierre’s plans were cut short on the early morning hours of October 23, 2020. Her boyfriend pulled to the side of the road on the Horace Harding Expressway in Queens, New York and strangled the 6-month pregnant Pierre, killing her and her unborn child.
After her body went lifeless, Goey Charles, now 33, dumped her limp body on the side of the road and drove off.
He left the 29- year old Pierre with a pair of gray sweatpants wrapped around her neck.
A Queens County jury convicted Charles of her murder in the second degree Wednesday.
“We achieved justice for Vanessa,” District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement following the conviction. “The verdict does not bring her back, but it holds her killer accountable.”
Pierre’s murder was caught on surveillance footage, described by prosecutors in a series of press releases.
In the dark of 2:50 a.m. that October morning, Charles is seen pulling to the side of the road in a white Dodge Challenger that law enforcement later determined was registered to Pierre, who was sitting in the backseat.
Forty minutes later, Charles got out of the driver’s seat and climbed into the backseat with Pierre.
Illuminated by the car’s light, Pierre’s moving body was later seen in the surveillance footage, which captured her last moments.
Charles shut the car door and soon after, Pierre’s body went motionless.
He remained in the backseat with Pierre’s rigid body stretched along the backseat for about an hour. Then, shortly after 4:30 a.m., he got back out, dragging her body out with him.
Charles discarded her body on the sidewalk by the Horace Harding Expressway, then drove off in her car.
About an hour and a half passed. Then, around 6:00 a.m., an city bus driver passing by saw the pregnant woman lying on the side of the road.
Emergency workers called to the scene pronounced her dead.
Charles faces 25 years behind bars for his second-degree murder conviction. He is scheduled to go in front of Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder for sentencing November 29.
Following Charles conviction, Katz said in a statement, “We will definitely push for Charles to be imprisoned for a very long time for brutality and callousness that he showed his girlfriend, the mother of his child.”
