A father who threw his seven-month-old baby off a bridge sent gruesome messages to the child’s mother telling her he’d killed their son.
23-year-old Tony Moreno from Middletown Connecticut is facing 70 years in jail after being found guilty of murdering his son, Aaden Moreno, on July 15, 2015.
Moreno threw Aaden off the 90-ft-high Arrigoni Bridge before jumping off the bridge himself in an attempt to kill himself, CBS News reports.
Before he attempted suicide Aaden’s mother, Adrianne Oyola, desperately tried to get in touch asking where he was, he replied ‘He’s [Aaden] dead. Soon I will be too’.
Adrianne immediately alerted police who found Moreno and an empty push chair on the bridge. Unfortunately he leapt over the side before they could stop him.
Moreno survived the fall however and was arrested for the murder of his son, who was found two days later in the Connecticut River by a kayaker 14 miles downstream.
Despite sending the texts Moreno attempted to defend himself claiming he never intended to harm his son and that he had slipped from his arms.
His lawyer Norman Pattis raised the possibility that Aaden suffered a muscle disorder that caused him to suddenly jerk causing Moreno to drop him.
The prosecution however argued that Moreno had a strained relationship with the boy’s mother, which had grown worse after Adrianne refused a marriage proposal, and that he’d made statements to the police indicating he’d killed the child.
These statements combined with the text messages Moreno sent led the jury to convict him of murdering his son.
Outside the court prosecuting lawyer Mr Peter McShane said:
Tony Moreno was on the bridge that night and he had the intent to commit murder and that’s just what he did. The jury did the right thing.
She [Adrianne ] wanted to tell you that this is the first time since she received that text at 11:45 that said ‘He’s dead’ that she’s been able to breathe. She feels like a huge weight has been lifted off her and as a result, she can now at this point go on with her life.
But from the moment she received those texts until today the poor girl has just been suffering and suffering and hopefully this is the closure that she and her family needs and will get.
Moreno will be sentenced in May although Mr Pattis claims they will appeal the jury’s decision.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.