Man accused of killing woman in driveway dies
By WBZ Staff
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BROCKTON, Massachusetts (WBZ) — The man accused of stabbing 48-year-old Veronica Goncalves to death in her Brockton driveway Wednesday afternoon has died, authorities said.
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said 56-year-old Joao Correia passed away Thursday. He was arrested Wednesday evening and taken to a hospital. Investigators have not said anything yet about why he was hospitalized or the cause of death.
Investigators called the attack, “savage, brutal and unprovoked.”
Police were called to the Crescent Street home for a woman bleeding in her driveway Wednesday afternoon. They found Goncalves on the ground suffering from a wound to the head, which the district attorney called a stabbing. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
An investigator told WBZ-TV Correia was an ex-boyfriend of Goncalves.
“We’re still in shock with what took place, what happened, putting the pieces together,” said Goncalves’s nephew Pedro Rosario. “As you can see, we have no answer.”
Goncalves had just returned from dropping her daughter off at work and had her 2-year-old grandchild in the car.
“It seems she was attacked right inside of her car,” said Rosario. “And her granddaughter was in the back seat.”
He added that the granddaughter was not physically hurt and is with family, but she is badly shaken.
“Preliminarily, this appears to have been a targeted attack and not a random act of violence,” Cruz said.
Her family said that Goncalves had not been in the United States for long and they don’t know why someone would want to kill her.
Rosario described Goncalves as “very hard-working, independent, strong-minded woman – always look out for her kids.”
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