HELL DAD
NO BAIL FOR FATHER OF BABY FOUND DEAD IN E. RIVER
Everyone has questions, but James Currie provided no answers.
The father of a baby boy found dead in the East River stood stone-faced in court on Friday as he was ordered held without bail for throwing his 7-month-old son Mason into the murky water before fleeing the country.
His only confession came in a cryptic text to his child’s mother: “You will never see Mason again,” he wrote, according to court papers.
Police charged Currie, 37, with the concealment of a human corpse for allegedly dumping his son Mason Saldana’s body into the waters near the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday.
“(There is) essentially irrefutable proof the defendant threw his infant son into the East River,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Shawn McMahon said during a brief arraignment hearing. Currie stood nearby dressed in a white Tyvek jumpsuit, his hands shackled behind his back.
“Very shortly afterward (he) planned a trip, taking three flights … ending up literally on the other side of the world,” McMahon said.
After his son’s body was recovered from the water, Currie jumped on a plane to Thailand, but was quickly arrested by authorities there.
He was returned to the U.S. and landed in Kennedy Airport Thursday night to face charges, cops said.
Charges against Currie could be updated once the city’s medical examiner determines how little Mason died, officials said.
Currie, who works as an MTA station cleaner, picked up the tot from the child’s mother at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. The boy was seen on video alive, in his arms, as he walked into his Co-op City building about 20 minutes later.
On Sunday afternoon, Mason’s body surfaced under the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan. Police suspect Currie killed Mason in his apartment, then stashed his body in a backpack as he walked toward the East River.
Accessing his MTA-issued MetroCard, investigators learned that Currie boarded a bus in the Bronx, then walked to the subway station at 23rd St. in Manhattan on Sunday. At about 4 p.m., he entered the transit system again, this time at Chambers St. Cops recovered video surveillance of Currie at the Chambers St. station, but he didn’t have his baby with him.
A few hours later, Currie boarded a flight to Bangkok at JFK, cops said. At about the same time, Mason’s mom, Julia DeJesus Saldana, called police because Currie never returned Mason or dropped him off at day care.
She sobbed as she spoke to the operator, because she had heard the news of a child found in the water and feared the worst, police said.
Saldana didn’t hear from Currie until he landed in Bangkok on Wednesday.
“The good news (is) we will never see each other again,” he texted her. “I am not in the USA.”
Currie’s lawyer Norman Williams asked everyone to reserve judgment, since his client hasn’t been charged with murder.
“Everybody needs to keep an open mind and not convict this man until there is evidence that he did something wrong,” Williams said following the hearing.