A Long Island man got 25 years to life in prison Wednesday for killing his pregnant girlfriend and leaving her body by the side of a road in Bayside in October 2020.
Goey Charles, 33, of Rochelle Court in Uniondale, was convicted by a jury on Nov. 14 of murder in the second degree for killing 29-year-old Vanessa Pierre and abandoning her lifeless body on a sidewalk.
According to the charges and trial testimony, at around 2:50 a.m. on Oct. 23, 2020, Charles drove the victim’s white Dodge Challenger to a location near 216-07 Horace Harding Expwy. Pierre was first seen on video surveillance in the front passenger seat of her car. At approximately 3:30 a.m., Charles got out of the car and went toward the backseat, where his girlfriend was then sitting. Eight minutes later, when a light inside the vehicle illuminated, Pierre could be seen moving around inside her car. At approximately 4:36 a.m., Charles exited the vehicle, dragged Pierre’s lifeless body out of the car and left her on the sidewalk. He got back in and drove away.
At around 6 a.m., an MTA bus driver saw Pierre on the ground. She was unresponsive with a pair of gray sweatpants wrapped around her neck, according to trial testimony. Emergency responders arrived on the scene and pronounced her dead. The medical examiner determined that Pierre died from asphyxia due to compression of the neck.
On Nov. 29, Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder sentenced Charles to 25 years to life in prison.
“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,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “The sentence does not bring Vanessa back, but it achieves justice in her memory.”
