The father of the 2-year-old Bronx boy who vanished last month was charged with his son’s murder Thursday – after video emerged of the heartless dad tossing the toddler into the Bronx River, cops and law enforcement sources said.
Arius Williams, 20, was charged with two counts each of murder and manslaughter in the death of little Montrell Williams, who was last seen on May 10, authorities said.
Video reviewed by investigators allegedly shows Arius launching the little boy into the air and throwing him into the river later that night, the sources said.
Then on Wednesday afternoon, a child’s body – believed to be Montrell’s – washed up near the Whitestone Bridge just off Ferry Point Park in Queens, according to the sources.
The badly decomposed body was swaddled in a blanket, clad in a diaper with a sock on one foot, the sources said.
“We are dealing with two losses,” Leroy Burton, 51, told reporters as he waited for his son to be arraigned at the Bronx Criminal courthouse.
“I lost my child and we lost him, too,” he said, referring to his grandson, Montrell.
Arius previously worked with kids as a teacher’s assistant at a school, until a domestic violence incident last year with Montrell’s mother, his dad said.
“His mind is not there. He’s not the same person we knew,” he said of Arius, while his grief-stricken wife stared at the floor.
Over the last couple of months, Arius had been suffering with mental health issues, walking “back and forth, talking to himself, laughing, looking at the wall, all type of weird stuff,” Burton added.
Before the heartbreaking crime, the young dad – who had split custody of Montrell – took him to a Mother’s Day gathering, where he apparently got into a scuffle with his own mother and stormed off with the toddler, sources said.
In the days to come, the boy’s concerned 17-year-old mom called the cops, who appeared to have told her they couldn’t intervene if her son was on a regularly scheduled visit, the sources said.
When both parents ran into each other on the street Sunday, Arius allegedly pulled a knife on his ex and claimed he threw their son off the Bruckner Bridge, according to the sources.
“They should have put out the missing persons report [earlier],” Burton said. “They could have put it out…We could have had closure earlier. We didn’t have to go through all this agonizing pain.”
“I just wish we could go back in time, that’s what I wish so this whole thing wouldn’t have gone on,” he added.
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is probing the department’s investigative work surrounding Montrell’s case, sources have said.
Arius was taken into custody Monday on custodial interference charges, after refusing to tell a family court judge his son’s whereabouts, cops and sources said.
