Bronx babies killed hidden in bathtub full of clothes: police

The bodies of a toddler and baby who were found stabbed to death more than half an hour after police responded to a domestic disturbance in the Bronx on Saturday had been concealed in a running bathtub under piles of clothes.

The young boys, aged 3 and 11 months, were found in the bathtub with ‘multiple stab wounds’ to their necks and torsos inside a homeless shelter at 246 Echo Place in Mount Hope by their father just before 8 p.m., police said.

At 7:21 p.m., police and emergency medical services workers responded to a 911 call that was most likely triggered by a carbon monoxide alarm in the third-floor apartment, according to police and sources. .

Police found the boys’ 22-year-old mother naked and ‘acting irrationally’ in the flat, which was filled with noxious gas after she lit burning objects in the kitchen, police and officials said. sources.

Officials turned off the water to the leaking tub and took the unidentified woman to St. Barnabas Hospital. They did not notice the children killed were hidden under the pile of clothes in the tub, police said.

“There was nothing obvious to suggest there were dead children in there,” a law enforcement source said. “There was no blood.”

Before he left for the hospital, a family friend told cops the woman’s children were with their father, police said.

The man, who was on the fourth floor of the building when cops were first called, made the gruesome discovery around 35 minutes later, and his desperate pleas for help prompted neighbors to call 911 a second time, at 7:57 p.m., officials said. .

The boys’ mother was considered a person of interest in the horrific double murder, police said. No charges had been brought against her on Sunday morning.

Neighbor Shannon Holyfield saw the boys’ father scream and cover the two naked boys, covered in blood. She described the scene as “horrible and heartbreaking”.

“He was screaming hysterically,” Holyfield said. “He was shouting ‘help me!’ And I came and opened my door and I see him coming down the hall with the two boys in his arms.

“They were dead. They were dead. There was blood everywhere, it covered them,” she continued.

“These are babies. The boys didn’t deserve this.

Holyfield said the parents of the slain babies fought earlier in the day.

A man who lives on the fourth floor of the complex told the Post that he helped the panicked father pull the children out of the tub when he found them, and noted that first responders and shelter staff were initially ” passed” in front of the stabbed children.

“I tried to give the little baby some air but it was too much,” the neighbor said.

“It’s just sad,” he said. “I said [the father] to put him on the bed. The older one, I tried to do CPR on him, give him some air but it didn’t work.

Other rescue efforts on the tiny unidentified victims failed. The medical examiner was to determine the cause of death, police said.