Dad Who Leapt Off Bridge With Baby Sent Mom Chilling Texts

'He's dead ... And soon I will be too'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 9, 2015 9:07 AM CDT
Dad Who Leapt Off Bridge With Baby Sent Mom Chilling Texts
Teddy bears, roses, and candles are left in memory of 7-month-old Aaden Moreno at the Veterans Memorial Gazebo in Middletown, Ct., yesterday.   (Catherine Avalone/The Middletown Press via AP)

The body of 7-month-old Aaden Moreno was found Tuesday night in the Connecticut River, and 21-year-old Tony Moreno, his father, has been charged in his murder after confessing to tossing him off a bridge, the AP reports. Before jumping into the water himself, Moreno made what he thought was a final phone call to his own mother, then sent a series of chilling text messages to the baby's 19-year-old mother, Adrianne Oyola, per the Hartford Courant. According to court records, Denise Moreno says she got a call from her son late Sunday asking her to come to the Arrigoni Bridge. She could hear Aaden crying in the background as her son said, "Just tell everyone I'm sorry." She called 911 and got to the bridge right before police did and just in time to see Tony jump, with an empty baby stroller nearby.

Shortly before that, Oyola started getting heart-stopping texts from Moreno. "I'll text you in the morning to see when you'll be dropping off Aaden," she wrote shortly after 11:30pm, per Fox Connecticut, to which Moreno responded, "I won't be. … Enjoy your new life without us." Her texts to Moreno started to get more frantic. "Don't play around like that. Please don't try and take him from me!!!! … I'm trying to make this co parent thing work," to which she got the response: "Your [sic] not a parent anymore … He's dead … And soon I will be too." Meanwhile, a family court judge who had denied Oyola a permanent restraining order against Moreno is under fire for his decision, per the Courant. The director of a domestic violence coalition tells the paper she's frustrated to see yet another situation in which a judge insists on seeing proof of actual violence instead of taking seriously "the threat of violence." (See Fox Connecticut for an unedited transcript of the text messages.)

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