HUNTS POINT, The Bronx (PIX11) — The 20-year-old father of a missing 2-year-old Bronx boy is being held at Rikers Island after allegedly telling the child’s mother he threw him in the Bronx River, according to law enforcement sources.
NYPD dive teams searched for the boy in the river near the Bruckner Expressway Monday night and for most of the day on Tuesday, but didn’t find him.
Police said the boy was last seen by his mother at 827 Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx at around 10 p.m. on May 10. He was wearing a white shirt and a diaper.
The dad took the child, Montrell Williams, to see his paternal grandmother for Mother’s Day in Hunts Point. The father then stormed out of the home with Montrell following an argument, according to his grandmother. She spoke with PIX11 News by phone on Tuesday.
She said that on May 11, the day after her son had exited her home with her grandson, she went to the local NYPD precinct, and spoke with an officer. "I said, 'My son kidnapped my grandchild out of my house,'" she told PIX11 News.
After making the report, she said in her Tuesday interview, officers told her that because the toddler's father took him, it's not necessarily a criminal act.
Her son never returned the boy to the toddler's 17-year-old mother. They share custody of the child.
The grandmother, who wished to remain anonymous, said that she'd reached the boy's father, her son, by phone, days after the toddler had gone missing.
"At first, he didn't say nothing," the grandmother recounted. She continued, though, that the toddler's father tried to reassure her. "He was like, 'Oh, he's good, he's good. Don't worry about it. He's all right.'"
He didn't provide believable proof to support that assessment, the grandmother said.
Later, the teen mom told police that she gave Montrell to his dad on May 10, but she has not seen the boy since, sources said. The father was supposed to bring the boy back to his mother on May 30.
When she saw him without the boy, the dad allegedly told her he'd thrown him in the river, sources said. The father did not tell police that.
Police searched the river based on what the mom had told them.
After refusing to speak with detectives, the father was taken to family court Monday in the Bronx on charges of custodial interference. A judge remanded him to Rikers Island.
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