MIDDLETOWN, Conn. _ Tony Moreno was convicted of murder on Wednesday for causing the July 2015 death of his infant son by throwing him off the Arrigoni Bridge.
Jurors reached their verdict after deliberating Tuesday afternoon and for a short time Wednesday 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.
Outside the courtroom, Moreno's attorney, Norman A. Pattis, said he planned to appeal the conviction.
"I'm disappointed the jury did not credit what Mr. Moreno had to say," Pattis said. "I thought Mr. Moreno was very courageous."
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. 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, and a kayaker found the boy's body 14 miles downstream in East Haddam on July 7, 2015.
Oyola testified on Wednesday about her strained relationship with Moreno. She said the difficulty between them came to a head when she refused his marriage proposal on the day of her senior prom in June 2015, a month before Aaden's death.
Oyola went to her prom on June 6, graduated from high school June 16, applied for a restraining order against Moreno on June 17, signed a shared-custody agreement after a court hearing June 29 and suffered the death of her baby on July 5.
Moreno and Oyola had been dating for a few years and got along fine until she got pregnant with Aaden, she testified. Things became strained, and their relationship worsened after Aaden was born Nov. 19, 2014, she said. In the application for a restraining order she wrote that she feared for her safety and Aaden's. Family court Judge Barry C. Pinkus did not grant a full restraining order, and encouraged the two instead to form a shared-custody agreement.
