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.
“We are grieving, my family is grieving, I have no words,” the mother of the child said outside her Bronx home Wednesday evening.
The dead child resembles photos of Montrell and was found dressed in a Calvin Klein T-shirt — the same article of clothing the toddler was wearing when he disappeared with his dad a month ago, heartbroken family members say they were told by cops. The city medical examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine how the child in the water died.
“They want to know if he died before he went in the water,” Williams’ stepfather, Leroy Burton, 51, said.
Cops and prosecutors are now building toward a criminal case against the boy’s 20-year-old father, Arius Williams, who police sources say told little Montrell’s mother he threw their son into the Bronx River. The body recovered Wednesday was found about 2 miles from where the Bronx River flows into the East River.
“He loved Montrell,” Burton said of his stepson. “He loved his son, because he always had his eye on him. I don’t know what the hell happened.”
Williams has been held on Rikers Island since Monday for being in contempt of court for refusing to tell a Bronx Family Court judge where the boy is.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday morning on Fox 5′ “Good Day New York” that “someone was seen throwing a package off a bridge into the Bronx River.”
“[The father is] charged with custodial interference, and he’s a person of interest in the disappearance of the child,” she added.
The incident on the bridge, near Bronx River Ave. and Bruckner Blvd., was caught on video recovered by cops and occurred within hours of little Montrell, who lives with his mom, going to see his father for a family Mother’s Day celebration the evening of May 10, a police source said.
Arius Williams got into a fight with his mother and ran out of the celebration with his son — the last time anyone saw the adorable toddler, relatives told the Daily News.
The family gathering was in the apartment Arius Williams shares with his mother in a NYCHA complex in Hunts Point. The bridge is about half a mile away.
The disappearance of Montrell 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.”
After angrily fleeing the family Mother’s Day celebration with his son, Arius Williams turned up at a cousin’s Mott Haven home a couple hours later without the boy, which further alarmed the family.
The family doesn’t normally allow Arius Williams to be with his son unsupervised, relatives said.
Family members told The News they tried to detain Arius Williams at the cousin’s apartment as they questioned him about little Montrell’s whereabouts but he only told them, “He gone, he gone,” before fighting his way out.
Arius Williams’ family says they went to two NYPD stationhouses 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.
“They said that he’s the father, so they ain’t do nothing,” said Burton, Arius William’s stepdad. “We told them about his little mental condition, that he’s off, and that the baby only had a T-shirt and Pampers on. They told us there’s nothing they could do, that he’s the father.”
Alicia Williams said the family started asking for help from cops immediately after her nephew disappeared with the boy.
“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.”
NYPD
Montrell Williams, 2, was last seen by his mother on May 10. (Instagram)
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.”
Tisch said Wednesday the NYPD is investigating how the department responded to the family’s concerns a month ago.
“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.
During this period, Arius Williams was posting on social media descriptions of his supposed activities with Montrell — but he refused to let his family see the child, relatives said.
“He was going on Facebook, he was going on IG [Instagram] and he was playing with us, ‘Oh, I got Montrell, I got Montrell, Auntie,” Alicia Williams said.
“I said, ‘Where’s the baby? I don’t want to hear about nothing else. Where’s my nephew?’ He wouldn’t tell me. He never showed us a picture.”
Arius Williams never gave little Montrell back to the boy’s mother, who has custody, when the visitation period was over, spurring her and her mother to go to Family Court demanding the child back, law enforcement sources said. The mother lives in the Adams Houses in the South Bronx.
“We called the police multiple times, and they did absolutely nothing,” a Tuesday Instagram post that appears to be from the boy’s mother reads. “If this was a white baby they’d be on it immediately. The NYPD seriously needs to be looked at and investigated.”
After the mom made repeated visits to Family Court, a judge ordered an arrest warrant for Arius Williams on May 30, a law enforcement source said.
The father had been arrested for assaulting Montrell’s mother two years ago when she was 15, sources said. It was not immediately clear what happened to that case.
Montrell’s mother ran into Arius Williams on Sunday and demanded to know where the boy was, police sources said. Arius Williams allegedly threatened her with a knife and said he had thrown the child into the Bronx River, the sources said.
June 11, 2025: Dad to mom: I threw tot in river
New York Daily News Front page of the New York Daily News for June 11, 2025: Police sources say father made grim statement and charge him with not revealing his boy’s whereabouts. Montrell Williams, 2, has not been seen since May 10.
NYPD divers had been searching the Bronx River since Monday, the same day cops took Arius Williams into custody for questioning. He was then sent to Rikers Island on the contempt of Family Court court charge after refusing to answer a judge’s questions about the boy.
The NYPD also released a photo of Montrell Monday and asked the public’s help locating him.
Arius Williams was ordered to return to Family Court each day to be given another chance to comply and answer questions but refused to even get on the bus from Rikers Island Tuesday, law enforcement sources said. He returned to court Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear if he revealed any information, the sources said.
With Graham Rayman
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