Who Is James Currie? Man Charged With Throwing His Baby Into River

A father, who accused of tossing his infant child into the East River in New York City before fleeing to Thailand, was brought back to the United States on Thursday.

It was also when the first photos of the suspect was released in the media:

The New York Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations, and Customs and Border Protection worked together to track him overseas and bring him back to New York. He arrived at John F. Kennedy Airport via a Korean airlines.

According to a video of his arrest, law enforcement agents were waiting for him at the jet-bridge. Currie was seen complying with orders to put his hands behind his head as an officer put chains around him before leading him off the plane.

James Currie, 37, from Bronx, was transported to NYPD 13th Precinct station in Manhattan, where he faced charges of concealment of a human corpse in the alleged dumping of his baby. He could be looking at further charges, depending on autopsy results of the victim, which was not expected within this week.

Currie is reportedly employed as a cleaner in Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to Heavy. There is no record of him in the New York State Unified Court System and no indication that he holds any kind of criminal record prior to the recent incident.

The deceased infant, identified as Mason Saldana, was born healthy in January. Currie and the mother of the child were not legally married.

According to NBC New York, there was a court-stipulated agreement for visitation involving the parents, but there were allegedly no red flags to suggest the child was in any impending harm.

On Aug. 4, Currie picked up his child from the mother’s home at around 12:30 p.m. EDT for a scheduled visitation. A video obtained by the police suggested Mason was alive when he arrived at his father’s house.

After 24 hours, Currie was seen leaving his home with a backpack covered with a blanket, fashioned as a baby carrier. The police suspect the baby was already dead by then.

NYPD Chief Dermot Shea said upon failing to get into contact with Currie, the mother of the child called 911, saying that her baby had not been dropped off at the day care center as originally planned.

The call from the child's mother, which was described as “blood curdling,” was made after 4 p.m. EDT on Aug. 5, which was after the news of a baby’s body floating in the waters of Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge had already broken. The mother was heard breaking down during the call, saying she feared the worst.

It was Monte Campbell, a tourist from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who jumped into the waters and retrieved Mason’s body before trying to resuscitate him, after his wife spotted the baby in the waters.

"She just called me over and said there was a baby in the water. I called 911. At that point I thought it was a doll," said Campbell.

The infant was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The backpack that Currie was seen carrying out of his apartment was also recovered by the police, floating near the infant’s body.