The twisted dad who allegedly left his 3-year-old daughter for dead inside a burning car threatened a murder-suicide an hour earlier — sending the tot’s mom and cops on a frantic, unsuccessful scramble to save the kid, family told The Post on Tuesday.
“Get your brothers and get the cops — he said he’s going to kill himself and the baby,” mom Cherone Coleman, 36, says she was told by a cousin after her unhinged ex-fiancee Martin Pereira called the relative.
The dire warning at 8 p.m. Sunday sent Coleman into a flurry of action, calling Nassau County police to check on Pereira’s Valley Stream home and alerting NYPD that her daughter, Zoey, was in danger.
Coleman desperately dialed Pereira — whom she split from in March — but when he caught sight of an officer in the background of a video call, he was only enraged further, she said.
“I know you’re talking — talking to the cops!” he raged in a call recorded by Coleman and reviewed by The Post.
“So what? I’ve got the cops here, so what? You’re f–king crazy. Where’s my daughter?” Coleman can be heard responding.
Then Pereira shot back: “Yeah, I’ll make you crazy … you’re never going to get you’re daughter again.”
Pereira hung up on her moments later. A distraught Coleman continued strained phone calls with him, but he was “just yelling incoherent, stupid stuff,” the mom said from her Queens home, which was still filled with the toddler’s pink toys Tuesday.
Police later brought her to the 113th Precinct station house — where things only got worse.
Coleman heard a call come over the police radio just before 9 p.m. for a grey car on fire and had a sinking feeling her daughter was inside.
“I had a feeling it was [Pereira’s car]. His car is an Audi, and it’s Champaign colored but at night it can look grey. I had a feeling it was my daughter,” she said.
She was correct.
Authorities found the little girl strapped to her infant seat inside the blazing car, which had been set up as a fiery death-trap. Chains held the back doors shut and a propane tank in the trunk was rigged with a tube to feed into the cabin via the back seat, sources said.
Coleman’s worst fears were later confirmed at Jamaica Hospital, where little Zoey was taken after being wrested from the flames.
“After I saw my daughter, I knew there was no way she survived that. I knew she was dead from the moment they took her out of the car,” Coleman said, breaking down in tears.
“She’ll have a closed casket [funeral]. I don’t want anybody to see her like that.”
Pereira, meanwhile, escaped the inferno with burns to 70 percent of his body, sources said. He is in police custody while heavily sedated in the hospital but had not yet been charged Tuesday.
Police were seen snapping photos inside his Long Island garage and hauling out a hammer and a crowbar.
Coleman’s cousin, who lives in California, posted a heartfelt apology to Facebook Monday that he couldn’t do more.
“To my family, I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it,” Tracy McLaurin wrote. “He called me before he did it and my heart is torn apart. Family I love you all, years won’t stop flowing. Please pray about this terrible situation. Cherone; I love you!”
Additional reporting by Tina Moore and Lorena Mongelli