CANADA • Deyan, 10 - Danyela, 12 PERISIC ~ Montreal QC

Ex-Montrealer charged with murdering son, 10

Daughter shot 8 times, but somehow survives fusillade
By JAN RAVENSBERGEN, Montreal GazetteDecember 15, 2010 12:37 AM



A former Montrealer has been arrested in Texas after two of his children were shot, one fatally, as officers tried to serve an arrest warrant at his Coldspring home Monday afternoon. Predrag Perisic, 54, is charged with murder in San Jacinto County and interference with child custody in Harris County, law enforcement officials said. Bond on the murder charge was set at $1 million. No bond was set on the interference charge.

Photograph by: www.lostnmissing.com, www.lostnmissing.com

MONTREAL – In late April, 10-year-old Deyan Perisic and his 12-year-old sister Danyela “were crying and begging” not to be uprooted from the home they shared from childhood with their mother and grandmother to move – on one day’s notice – to live with their father in Texas, their cousin Vicky Pololis said Tuesday night.
But a Quebec Superior Court judge, citing The Hague Convention, had just ordered the two youngsters taken to Texas immediately. Danyela was yanked from Gardenview Elementary School, missing the Grade 6 graduation ceremony for which she’d already bought her dress.
Dean’s body now lies in a Texas morgue – and his father, 55-year-old Predrag Perisic, formerly of Montreal, had been charged with the boy’s Monday-evening murder near Houston.
Danyela remains hospitalized “with eight bullet wounds,” Pololis said: “I know she got out of surgery at 5:30 this (Tuesday) morning, and that she was in surgery for at least eight hours.”Vera Vucerakovich, the 46-year-old mother of the two, flew to the bedside of what is now her only child, arriving in mid-afternoon Tuesday.

Montreal police had showed up about 9:30 p.m. Monday at the front door of the family home to inform them that Deyan “was deceased.” The police “had no (other) information for us, they did not even know what had happened,” Pololis added. Officers delivered what news they could in person, at the request of Texas police, and stayed for several hours as family members filled them in on a custody struggle that led to Deyan’s death.

And Pololis, 23, who grew up “like brother and sister” with the two youngsters above her in their three-generations-together family duplex in St. Laurent, spoke through a veil of grief combined with anger:“Why did they get sent back to Texas? These are Canadian children.”The close-knit family is “in pieces,” she added: “There are no words.”

Vucerakovich fought hard since April to get her children back, through legal channels.By late October, she was granted full temporary custody of her youngsters in Quebec Superior Court – but Perisic went missing with them Oct. 26.

Perisic, Deyan and Danyela were found Monday about 5 p.m., after police heard gunshots when they arrived at a home in Coldspring, Tex., near Houston, to serve an arrest warrant on Perisic for child custody interference.After Vucerakovich was granted full temporary custody, “she was never able to contact him, never able to find him,” Pololis recounted of the estranged spouse: “From that day on, she was never able to see or speak to the children.”

During the six weeks since, “nobody wanted to help us,” Pololis said: “Not the RCMP. Not the FBI.
They refused to put out an Amber Alert because they said the kids were with their father, and that they were not in danger.“Just because children are with a parent, it doesn’t mean an Amber Alert should not be put out.”“I believe that maybe if an Amber Alert was put out, it could have helped us find them” earlier, without death or injuries.“The Canadian police didn’t do anything because they were abducted in Texas.“The FBI didn’t do anything because they were Canadian citizens. And they didn’t believe they were in Texas anymore, they believed they had fled Texas.When Vucerakovich “told them, four weeks ago, that she knew where they were, that she knew whose house they were in, but she didn’t know exactly where it was, they did nothing to find the children.“Everybody believed we were over-exaggerating.“We tried so hard to explain to all of them that he was really a danger.

And they said that maybe we were over-dramatizing the situation.“But we lived in this house with him for quite a few years. And we saw who he was. We knew he was a dangerous person. And nobody – not the Montreal police, not the Texas police, not the RCMP and not the FBI – took us seriously.“Missing Children was the only one to put up the poster.”

The children and their mother had moved to La Porte, Tex., also near Houston, in August 2009, to live with Perisic, after he and Vucerakovich had been “living separately for years,” Pololis said.“Over the years,” she explained, “he kept begging her, please, please come, I don’t want a divorce, let’s try and be a family again.”The attempt at reconciliation was punctuated by frequent fights and occasional intervention by local police.

In early January, Vucerakovich and the children returned to St. Laurent.Dean and Danyela re-enrolled at Gardenview, into Grade 4 and Grade 6 respectively.
The court-ordered return to Texas in April – the last time she ever saw Deyan alive – was heartbreaking, Pololis recalled:“When they were leaving, they were crying and begging for us not to send them back.“They were scared, they didn’t want to live there. And once they were back there, their father never allowed us communication with them.... They would get in trouble when we spoke to them.”“The one and only time I spoke” since with Danyela, “maybe for 30 seconds,” to wish her a happy birthday, her father “called me back and told me: ‘Don’t you ever call her back.’ ”“After they moved down there, he wanted them to eliminate us from their lives completely,”

At the April hearing that sent the children back, “the judge did not allow them to speak in court,” said Pololis, who said she was also excluded from the proceedings and stayed with the children in the courthouse corridor.
The children’s interests were represented by a lawyer.“My aunt said that she ran (with the children last January, returning to St. Laurent) because she feared for her life and the lives of her children. “The judge said this was not a custody case, this is an international law” and ruled that the youngsters were permanent residents of Texas.“We said, ‘What permanent residents? These are citizens of Canada.’“She said no, that the kids must be with their father. Take them home, pack them a bag, and take them back.”
At Gardenview, the news of the tragedy hit hard.“We are all in shock,” said Tina Lavranos, the school’s principal.“Both children were with us since kindergarten.“They were lovely in every aspect – model students with many friends.“I met with my staff after school and we are all in mourning.”A trauma team from the English Montreal School Board will be at the Gardenview Wednesday, to assist students and teachers.It will also likely be at the LaurenHill Academy Junior Campus, said Angela Mancini, the board’s chair, because many of Danyela’s friends and former classmates are in their first year there.“On behalf of the entire school board, I wish to express our deepest sympathies to the family,” Mancini said.“We wish Danyela well. Our prayers are with her.”Both were “really good kids,” Pololis said:“Polite. Kind-hearted. Good students. Very active. Very joyful. Deyan played soccer, he loved sports. He was always very active out front with his friends”Danyela “likes to read. She is much more studious. She was always into reading and drawing, things like that.”

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Montrealer+charged+with+murdering/3978412/story.html#ixzz189t2odEB

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Former Montrealer indicted in Texas
Could face death penalty
February 25, 2011


Former Montrealer Predrag Perisic was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on Friday for capital murder and capital attempted murder - both of which are punishable with the death penalty upon conviction. The 55-year-old is alleged to have shot his 10-year-old son, Deyan, to death and seriously wounded his 12-year-old daughter, Danyela, on Dec. 13 in Coldspring, Tex., about 100 kilometres from Houston.

Predrag Perisic, a Canadian citizen who lived in Montreal until 2007, was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on Friday for capital murder and capital attempted murder - both of which are punishable with the death penalty upon conviction. The 55-year-old is alleged to have shot his 10-year-old son, Deyan, to death and seriously wounded his 12-year-old daughter, Danyela, on Dec. 13 in Coldspring, Tex., about 100 kilometres from Houston.

Perisic had been missing with his children in Texas for more than a month at the time of the shooting. A Quebec Court order had been issued for him to return the children to the custody of their mother, Vera Vucerakovich, in Montreal. The couple was in the process of getting a divorce.

Richard Countiss, the district attorney in San Jacinto County, told The Gazette that Perisic was actually indicted on five counts; capital murder, attempted capital murder, murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The reason for that is that Quebec Court documents in the custody case left Countiss uncertain that he could prove that Perisic was guilty of kidnapping. One of the documents expired five days before the shooting, although Countiss said he received other documents Thursday that showed the custody order had in fact been extended and was in effect at the time of the shooting.

The kidnapping charge will be handled by a prosecutor in another county, Countiss said.

The murder and attempted murder charges are "fall-back" charges, Countiss said, that could be used instead of the capital murder and capital attempted murder charges should Perisic and his lawyer have the capital charges quashed because the Quebec documents are deemed unclear, or not strong enough proof that a kidnapping took place. A capital case involved the commission of at least two different types of felony crimes, Countiss said.

The murder and attempted murder charges are both punishable with consecutive life sentences, Countiss added.

Perisic will continue to be detained in San Jacinto district jail for the time being. He could face a trial as soon as this summer, Countiss said.

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