The grieving mother of a 2-year-old boy tossed to his death in the East River is suing the city and the NYPD for $60 million, accusing them of failing to try to save him when told he’d been taken by his dad.
Cierra Carroll, 17, claims in a new complaint that police misclassified her call when she reported little Montrell Williams missing in May — with someone even hanging up the phone after asking, “So what?”
“Montrell Williams should be here today if it wasn’t for the NYPD being neglectful in finding him,” family spokesman Rev. Kevin McCall said at a press conference outside the NYPD 40th Precinct stationhouse on Friday, according to the Daily News.
“No amount of money will bring him back,” McCall said. “However, the NYPD has to be held responsible.”
Carroll said she called police on May 11 after Montrell’s father, 20-year-old Arius Williams, failed to return him — tragically, it turned out, one day after the tot was already dead.
But she said cops blew her off when she called 911, she claims.
“They told me not to follow him and to go to the police to file a complaint,” Carroll told the Daily Mail. “I told the police that he had a warrant, they said, ‘So what?’”
That official then “hung up the phone,” according to Carroll’s own mom, Octavia Roane.
McCall first accused the NYPD of negligence in the case in June alongside Roane, Montrell’s grandmother, claiming police misclassified the 911 call as a simple custody dispute.
Arius Williams is now charged with killing his tiny son one day earlier by allegedly tossing him off a Bronx overpass and into the East River during a custodial visit with the toddler.
Carroll waited for her boy to be returned outside a McDonald’s on Mother’s Day.
The tot’s body was later recovered from the waters off Ferry Point Park in Queens.
Although police weren’t notified that Montrell was missing until a day after he was killed, the family said it took until May 28 for a warrant to be issued ordering the dad to produce the boy.
The brute even taunted Carroll when she questioned him about their son.
“Shut the f–k up,” he allegedly snapped at her. “I threw that n—a into the river!”
Now, Montrell’s family said the NYPD bears some blame.
“NYPD officers misclassified the call as a custody dispute, failed to initiate a missing child investigation, failed to issue an Amber Alert, and took no immediate steps to locate or safeguard Montrell,” the lawsuit said, according to the Daily News.
In an email Sunday, a spokesperson for the NYPD said the department “will review the lawsuit if and when it is filed.”
