Eric Persaud, Queens man who burned girlfriend's face with hot iron, sentenced to 13 years in prison

Eric Persaud gets ready for his sentencing to 13 years in jail at Queens criminal court for burning his girlfriend's face with an iron and slashing her with a box cutter.

A Queens man who burned his girlfriend's face with a hot iron while their three children watched was sentenced to 13 years in prison Wednesday by a judge who called the gruesome attack "horrendous and sick."

Eric Persaud apologized to his girlfriend and urged her to be a good mother to their young children.

"My actions were cowardly, and there was no excuse for losing my cool," Persaud told Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory Lasak, his voice trembling.

Lasak scolded Persaud for forcing the woman to turn up the heat on the iron so he could permanently scar her for calling the cops over an earlier attack.

"Your actions are some of the worst I've seen a man do to a woman," Lasak told Persaud. "The actions that you took on that day were horrendous and sick."

Prosecutors say Persaud, 36, flew into a rage on April 30, 2009, because he was upset that she'd called 911 a week before when he smashed her phone and computer. He promised to kill her if she called the cops again.

When the woman refused to burn herself with the iron, Persaud stuck a towel in her mouth and burned her on both cheeks while forcing her to turn up the heat.

When that wasn't enough, he slashed her in the face with a razor blade, prosecutors say.

The woman spent 11 days in the hospital.

Persaud called the woman hundreds of times from Rikers Island, begging her not to testify against him. Queens prosecutors retrieved recordings of the phone calls and planned to use them against Persaud if he'd gone to trial.

Persaud pleaded guilty to an assault charge last month




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