JUDGE

Middletown Father to Serve 70 Years for 7-Month-Old Son's Murder

A Middletown father found guilty of murder in the death of his 7-month-old son has been sentenced to 70 years in prison.

Prosecutors said 23-year-old Tony Moreno threw his son Aaden off the Arrigoni Bridge in 2015.

Moreno maintained through the trial that he never intended to kill his son and that the child slipped from his arms and into the Connecticut River 90 feet below. 

In court Wednesday, prosecutors said Moreno betrayed the sacred trust between himself and his son and should get life in prison without parole.

He has been sentenced to 60 years for the murder charge and 10 years for risk of injury to a minor to be served consecutively.

"The utter depravity of the crime, a father killing his infant son, speaks for itself," Middletown Superior Court Judge Elpedio Vitale said.

"I won't see my son grow up, to reach one, to take his first step, to see his first tooth or say his first word," Aaden's mother, Adrianne Oyola, said Wednesday. "You took my whole world right from me. In seconds, you destroyed my whole life."

On the stand during the trial, Moreno held a baby doll in his arms that he said represented his son, and he spoke about what happened on the night of Sunday, July 5, 2015.

Two days passed before a canoeist found Aaden's body in the water, near the East Haddam Swing Bridge.

Moreno claimed that his intention was to take his own life on the bridge, not his child’s, and that Aaden slipped from his hands into the water.

Moreno jumped from the bridge but survived after emergency crews received a call from Aaden’s mother, who said that Moreno was suicidal, and responded to the scene.

In February, jurors found Moreno guilty of murder. He was also found guilty of risk of injury to a minor. 

"Sitting here listening to people speak of him as this monster he's portrayed is not the man I gave birth to," Tony Moreno's mother, Denise Moreno, said.

Oyola said she tried to forgive Moreno, but she cannot.

"My heart only holds hate for you and all that you've done to me," Oyola said. 

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