ALBANY – A woman charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to drive herself and her son into the Hudson River had been struggling with her mental health and arguing with the child’s father in the hours before police found her car stuck at the Corning Preserve boat launch, according to information released during a preliminary hearing Thursday.
Ten family members and supporters of the 23-year-old mother came to the hearing in city criminal court, including one holding a letter-sized photo of the woman and her child. The woman’s mother declined to speak to a reporter earlier in the week.
The case has drawn significant attention online, with the city police department’s Facebook post that announced her arrest drawing nearly 700 comments — with many debating the seriousness of the charge and what mental health help the mother might need.
Officers said they found the woman sitting in her car around 5 a.m. on Saturday, with her 2-year-old son in her lap near the boat launch. In addition to attempted murder, she was charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
The Albany County district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case.
Three Albany police officers testified during the hearing, laying out the prosecution’s case for the attempted murder charge. Officer Chad McCanney said he was the first officer to respond to the scene. He testified that when he arrived, he found the silver Mazda sedan with the front wheels over the curb of the walking path along the river.
He said that the car door was locked. The woman opened the door after he asked her to and told him she had been attempting to park the car when she accidentally went over the curb.
The boat launch sits near several dozen parking spots beneath I-787. The Mohawk Hudson bike path runs parallel along the river, perpendicular to the parking lot. The woman had driven over the curb and the 8-foot wide path, leaving the front two wheels over a section of curb separating the bike path from the river’s edge.
Later in the hearing, Albany police Det. Jacob Sopchak provided further details on how police came to the attempted murder charge.
Sopchak said the boy’s father gave police a statement that the two had gotten into a dispute, with the woman arguing the father wasn’t present enough in the boy’s life and growing angry that he might be involved with another woman.
The two spoke multiple times over FaceTime and at one point the woman told the boy’s father, “something to the effect of, ‘you’ll never see either of us or our child again,’” and pointed the phone’s camera to the Hudson River, Sopchak testified.
The detective said that when he interviewed the woman, who had waived her right to have an attorney present, she confirmed they had been fighting and speaking over FaceTime. She said she had driven her son down to the boat ramp to watch the boats and had accidentally driven too far, going up over the curb and becoming stuck.
The woman’s attorney, Michael Jurena, argued that nothing she had said or done was a clear indicator that she intended to kill herself or her child. Her statement to the boy’s father should be taken as phrasing often used in custody disputes, he said.
But Assistant District Attorney Ariel Fallon said the court should be able to infer that the act of showing the boy’s father the Hudson River, combined with the threat of him never seeing a child again, that the woman meant to harm her child.
The mother did not speak during the hearing other than conferring with her attorney. City Court Judge Joshua Farrell ruled that the case should be sent to a grand jury to consider an indictment.
After the hearing, Jurena said he would ask a county court judge to consider bail to get the woman out of the county jail and into a mental health treatment program.
“She has some things she’s been dealing with,” he said. Earlier this year, the woman wrote on social media about the struggle of holding a full-time job while going to school full-time and being a mother.
Several of the woman’s family members and supporters broke down sobbing as Farrell made his decision.
“We love you ‘T’,” a supporter shouted as she was led from court.
“I love you guys, too,” the woman responded.