DAD GUILTY IN BABY’S FATAL BRIDGE PLUNGE

Tony Moreno testified that his son’s death was an accident, claiming he had been planning to kill himself but not the baby.

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — Tony Moreno was convicted of murder yesterday for killing his infant son in July 2015 by throwing him off the Arrigoni Bridge.

Jurors reached their verdict after deliberating Tuesday afternoon and for a short time yesterday morning after reviewing the testimony of Middletown police Officer Austin Smith, the first officer on the scene at the bridge, and Moreno’s own testimony from Friday.

Moreno, 23, of Middletown, was convicted of charges of murder and risk of injury to a child. He faces up to 70 years in prison when he is sentenced May 18. Moreno’s attorney, Norman A. Pattis, said he planned to appeal the conviction.

During the trial, prosecutors called witnesses who said Moreno confessed to a detective and a hospital psychiatrist, with a police officer present, that he killed his son, Aaden. The state showed the jury text messages sent between Moreno and Aaden’s mother, Adrianne Oyola, in the minutes before Aaden’s death.

Moreno’s text messages said that 7-month-old Aaden was dead and that he would soon be dead, too.

But Moreno in his testimony said he never planned on killing Aaden, and that the boy’s death was an accident. Aaden fell from his arms while he was standing at the bridge railing, and Moreno had been planning on killing himself but not the baby, he said during the trial.

During the trial Moreno’s mother, Denise Moreno, testified about getting a horrifying call from Tony late at night on July 5, 2015. He told her he was on the bridge, and asked her to come retrieve Aaden’s stroller and a phone containing pictures of the two of them.

She raced to the bridge with her other son, Aaron, and called 911 on the way, arriving just before the first police officer.

Denise, Aaron Moreno and police called out to Tony to get him to stop walking on the bridge, and watched as moments later Moreno put both hands on the railing and vaulted himself over the edge to fall nearly 100 feet into the Connecticut River below.

He was pulled from the water by firefighters in the department’s rescue boat 30 minutes later, and spent several days in the intensive care unit at Hartford Hospital.

Officials spent two days searching the river for Aaden. A kayaker found the boy’s body 14 miles downstream in East Haddam on July 7, 2015.

AP PHOTOS HORRIFYING: Tony Moreno demonstrates during his trial, left, how he held his son, Aaden, on the railing of the Arrigoni Bridge. Moreno, conferring with lawyer Norman A. Pattis, below, was convicted yesterday of throwing the boy to his death from the...