DeLand, FL - A woman's ex-boyfriend is in jail after he broke into her apartment and kidnap her as she slept next to her current boyfriend.
The Volusia County Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center got a 911 call close to 4 a.m. on Saturday (April 6th), from a man who said that someone broke into his apartment and began to smash things with a hammer.
In that call, the male also said that his girlfriend was kidnapped by that man in a silver SUV.
He said that the woman was his girlfriend and the suspect was 41-year-old Rene Pereyra, her ex from New York.
Close to 4:30 a.m., an emergency GPS location was requested for the girlfriend's phone, but her location was not available because the phone was turned off.
Not long after that, dispatch was able to have the suspect's phone number "pinged" through Sprint.
Sprint gave VCSO coordinates to his location, which showed that he was near North Ridgewood Avenue and Holly Boulevard in DeLand.
VCSO's Air One flew over the area and found an SUV in the area that matched the description given to them by the woman's boyfriend. Officers responded to the area and found Pereyra in the driver seat of the vehicle and the woman in the passenger seat.
Pereyra was arrested and the woman was secured. When officers searched the vehicle they found a hammer on the rear passenger floor. Pereyra was transported to DeLand Police Department for questioning.
At DeLand PD, Pereyra told investigators that he and the victim had dated when they were in their late teens and early 20's. The couple eventually separated and his ex-girlfriend got married and had two children.
They reconnected after she went through a divorce and they had two children of their own. At the time, Pereyra lived in New York and she lived in New Jersey.
Four years before this incident, she moved to Florida. Pereyra said that she moved because she was upset with him for still being married to someone else.
While she was in Florida, Pereyra visited her and her kids around two to three times a year, sometimes more.
In March of 2019, they began to have relationship issues because of the distance and him still being married. She began to ignore his calls before blocking him from all contact.
He told investigators that he didn't tell her but he believed she knew that he would come down since she blocked his calls. In March, he bought a plane ticket and on April 5th he flew to Florida.
When in Florida, Pereyra rented the vehicle, the same he was arrested in, and drove to DeLand. When in DeLand, he bought a hammer, a screwdriver and gloves, before he went to her apartment.
At the apartment, he tried knocking on the door with no avail. Instead, he went around to his son's window and began to knock. His son kept sleeping so he used the hammer to break open the window, and managed not to wake his son.
Pereyra said he walked through the apartment and found his ex-girlfriend sleeping in bed with her current boyfriend, which infuriated him. He woke them both up and began to scold his ex for having another man in bed and not waiting another couple of months to start a new relationship.
In his rage, he used the hammer to break their bedroom mirror, which cut his hand, as he had not put on the gloves he bought.
From that point, stories began to diverge.
Pereyra said that he told his girlfriend that the two of them were going for a drive, but the girlfriend and her current boyfriend said differently.
Both of them said that Pereyra grabbed her by the arm and forced her out of the apartment and to his SUV that was waiting outside.
Her narrative says that Pereyra was driving like a maniac as he drove towards West Plymouth. The two eventually came to a stop at a development close to Citrus Grove Elementary.
There, Pereyra began to question her about her new relationship. During the interrogation, she said that Pereyra told her "You better not press charges on me. You'll regret it."
He also told her that if she pressed charges, he would break her legs and slash her face.
Pereyra then asked her how he was going to get her home. She said that he could drop her off a few blocks away from her apartment, but Pereyra said that wasn't safe.
Later on, Air One began to hover over the vehicle and officers began to pull up, to which Pereyra responded: "That's probably for me."
Afterwards, he was arrested.
Pereyra is currently in custody at Volusia County Jail where he's being held on $75,000 bond for kidnapping, burglary and armed burglary.
It's not know if Pereyra will be extradited back to New York.
