newjerseynewsroom.com

Smile! You're on New Jersey's Cruelest Criminals!

Footage from a video camera installed in the bedroom of a defenseless 91-year-old woman led to the arrest of a Jersey City home health aide Thursday after the daughter of the victim viewed the video tape and saw the worker senselessly abusing her mother.

Police arrested Carmen Pereira and charged her with aggravated assault with extreme indifference, endangering the welfare of an incompetent person and neglect of an elderly/disabled person.

The Star-Ledger reported that after watching Pereira repeatedly slap her mother "about the face and head multiple times with an open hand," the 62-year-old daughter of the victim contacted the health aid worker's boss and then summoned police and an ambulance.

The fragile elderly woman was treated at the Jersey City Medical Center for a cut above her right eye allegedly caused by Pereira's physical assault. The heartless cad had provided "care" for the elderly woman in her Cator Avenue home for 11 years, NJ.COM reported.

The victim's daughter asked Pereira to care for her mother overnight Sunday because she was going away. Before leaving, the daughter switched on a video camera in her mother's room. When she returned on Monday Pereira left, saying everything had gone well overnight.

But when the daughter sat down to review the video footage, she saw the abuse her mother endured at the Bergen Avenue woman's hands, The Jersey Journal reported.

The daughter told police that her mother often had bumps and bruises but when she would ask Pereira about them the worker would attribute them to medication.

— ALICIA CRUZ, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM