PLANTATION, Fla. – Local 10 News has obtained surveillance video that captured a man dousing his estranged wife with gasoline last month in Plantation and setting her on fire.
"It was such an ugly thing. It was just horrible," the victim's boss, Marc Werner, said.
Sept. 26 was supposed to be a regular day on the job for Heilyn Hernandez Pages. She had just pulled up that morning when she spotted her estranged husband in the parking lot.
Surveillance video from the shopping plaza on Broward Boulevard, just west of Northwest 70th Avenue, shows Noel Garcia De Armas running up to her car.
Pages tried to drive away, but he blocked her in and opened up her driver's side door. The pair struggled and witnesses said De Armas was beating her before he poured a Sprite bottle filled with gasoline on her and set her on fire.
"I can't get that image out of my mind, and it's (been) five weeks," Werner said. "She had three feet of flames coming off her back, from her neck down to her buttocks."
Werner is Pages' boss at Nature's Sleep in Plantation, where she has worked for the last several months. He said she was the breadwinner of the family and was constantly working to provide for her 3-year-old daughter, whom she shared with De Armas.
"(It was a) horrific demonstration from one person to another person, especially a wife and mother of (his) child," Werner said.
De Armas is seen on the video walking back to his white pickup truck after the attack, not offering any help to his wife.
Police said he turned himself in hours later and is facing an attempted murder charge.
Werner and Pages' former employer have set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for her medical expenses.
"She's part of our family," Werner said. "We treat all of our people like family, so if something happens we are going to be there."
Pages remains hospitalized at Jackson Memorial Hospital.