Body believed to be missing 2-year-old Bronx boy Montrell Williams found in East River
A body believed to be missing 2-year-old Bronx boy Montrell Williams was recovered from the East River Wednesday afternoon, police sources said.
Investigators are working to officially confirm the identity of the child's body found in the waters off Ferry Point Park in the Bronx near the Whitestone Bridge at 12:18 p.m.
The grim discovery came as Arius Williams, the missing boy's father cops say told little Montrell's mother he threw their son into the Bronx River, is refusing to return to to court after being ordered held on Rikers Island, the Daily News has learned.
The body recovered Wednesday was found about two miles from where the Bronx River flows into the East River.
A Bronx Family Court judge ordered 20-year-old Arius Williams held without bail for contempt of court Monday for refusing to divulge the location of the boy. While jailed on a contempt of court order, a defendant has to come back to court each day and is given a chance to cooperate, a law enforcement source said.
But on Tuesday Williams refused to get on the bus at Rikers Island to face the judge, the source said.
The father's refusal to cooperate comes as police and prosecutors work to build a criminal case against him, sources said.
The disappearance has left Williams' mother devastated, according to her sister Alicia Williams.
'She's not getting no sleep,' Alicia Williams told the Daily News Wednesday. 'She keeps calling me. I don't even know what to say to her. He took her first grandchild.'
'She said she still loved her son,' she added. 'That's like any mother But this right here is not acceptable. I cannot forgive this young man for this.'
During a harrowing exchange on Sunday, the father allegedly threatened Montrell's 17-year-old mother with a knife and told her he had thrown the child into the Bronx River, police sources said.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday that 'someone was seen throwing a package off a bridge into the Bronx River.'
'We have diving teams in the river,' Tisch said on Fox 5's 'Good Day New York.' '(The father is) charged with custodial interference and he's a person of interest in the disappearance of the child. Our duty now is to try to locate the child.'
The incident on the bridge was caught on video recovered by cops. It occurred near Bronx River Ave. and Bruckner Blvd. within hours of Montrell going to see his the father for a family Mother's Day celebration on May 10, a police source said. Arius Williams got into a fight with his mother and ran out of the celebration with little Montrell, relatives told the Daily News.
Arius Williams turned up at a cousin's Mott Haven home a couple hours later without the boy, which alarmed the family.
Relatives said they tried to detain Arius Williams at the cousin's apartment as they questioned him about Montrell's whereabouts but he only told them, 'He gone, he gone,' before fighting his way out.
Arius Williams' family says they went to police to report their concerns for Montrell's safety but were told there was nothing cops could do since the boy was with his dad during an approved visitation period.
'We went there on Mother's Day. That same day,' Alicia Williams said. 'I don't like the fact they didn't want to help us.'
The desperate family took things into their own hands, she said.
'We kept putting them on social media,' she said. 'I put it on Instagram, my daughter put it on Instagram. We were putting up pictures. The NYPD wasn't helping us. They weren't helping us so we did it. All the fam did. We were posting and putting up posters.'
Meanwhile Arius Williams never produced the child when his visitation period was over, spurring Montrell's worried mother and maternal grandmother to go to Family Court, demanding the child back.
About three weeks later, after repeatedly going to Family Court, a judge ordered an arrest warrant for the father on May 30, a law enforcement source said.
On Monday, a day after Arius Williams allegedly threatened the boy's mom with a knife and said he had tossed the boy in the Bronx River, the NYPD released a photo of Montrell and asked the public's help locating him.
Tisch said Wednesday the NYPD is investigating how the case has been handled.
'The NYPD takes any case involving a missing person very seriously and we are looking into how the initial report from the family was handled,' she said.
The father had been arrested for assaulting Montrell's mother two years ago back when the young mom was 15, sources said. It was not immediately clear what happened to that case.
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