DR. GREGORY PERRIER, A HAITIAN DOCTOR,KILLS HIMSELF AT GRAVE OF HIS PARENTS RATHER THAN HEAD TO JAIL.

Doctor Kills himself At grave Of his parents rather than head To jail - he was of Haitian descent

Sunday, 01 May 2011 10:53

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A Brooklyn doctor about to report to a federal lockup stopped first at his parents' gravesite, pulled out a gun and killed himself Friday.

Orthopedic surgeon Gregory Perrier, 46, pleaded guilty three years ago to filing phony bills and was due to turn himself in to serve a one-year sentence at noon.

Perrier was of Haitian descent. Police sources say he asked his lawyer, to take him to a cemetery so he could visit his parents' grave on the way to the Otisville Federal Prison in Orange County.

Reports are when they arrived at the cemetery he shot himself in the head.

He fell to the ground, face up, his left hand on his chest. There was a sports coat on his lap and a bouquet of mixed flowers at his side.

"I'm crushed," said a previous lawyer, Edward Sapone. "He had six wonderful children and a supportive wife."

His lawyer says Perrier, who worked out of a Flatlands office, "got unfortunately caught up" in fraud with a colleague. The judge in the case, John Gleeson, twice allowed Perrier, to travel to Haiti last year to help victims of a devastating earthquake.

In a posting on the website for a Haitian hospital last year, Perrier spoke about his work for the Red Cross on a Navy hospital ship. "I have this burning desire of helping my fellow haitians," he wrote.

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