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A double tragedy on the Victory Bridge
Perth Amboy mom tosses baby, leaps into Raritan
Saturday, June 17, 2006
BY NAWAL QAROONI AND MARK MUELLER
Star-Ledger Staff
Jerlisa Contreras offered a confession at 10:44 a.m. yesterday. A heartbeat later, she said her good-byes.
"I just killed my baby," Contreras told her cousin in a cell phone call. "And now I'm going to kill myself."
Then the line went dead.
Moments later, the 24-year-old Perth Amboy woman climbed over a railing atop the Victory Bridge and jumped, falling more than 100 feet into the Raritan River below.
Contreras' daughter, 15-month-old Alyssa Scott, was in the river already, thrown there by her mother in what family members described as a fit of despair and anger over a recent breakup with the child's father.
Contreras survived the fall. The baby did not. Alyssa was pronounced dead shortly before noon in Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy. Contreras remained in critical condition last night in Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. Family members said she was brain dead.
"I can't believe she did that," said Jessica Colon, 25, Contreras' neighbor and close friend. "I knew she was depressed and stressed, but I never knew she'd go to that level."
It was to her cousin that Contreras placed what may have been her final call, time-stamped at 10:44 in Alexandra Contreras' cell phone. Jerlisa Contreras, known to her large extended family as "Fanny," sounded teary and anguished, said Alexandra Contreras, 31, also of Perth Amboy.
The cousin said she collapsed onto the floor of her kitchen when the call suddenly ended. Hours later yesterday, as a swarm of relatives and reporters gathered outside Jerlisa Contreras' High Street home, Alexandra still labored to square dueling images: the woman she knew as a loving mother and the woman who dropped her own child from a bridge.
"She was a good mother," Alexandra Contreras said. "I could never imagine she would do something like this."
Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said investigators had not yet established a motive in the case. Authorities also are not yet certain whether Jerlisa Contreras harmed the child before tossing her from the bridge, which connects Perth Amboy and Sayreville.
Family members say they assume Contreras made the call to her cousin -- one in a series of final messages -- from the bridge after dropping her daughter. Kaplan said detectives have more investigating to do. An autopsy scheduled for today is expected to show whether Alyssa suffered any trauma before the fall, which Kaplan placed at between 100 and 200 feet.
In the moments before she jumped, Contreras reached out to others, family members said. She left messages on her father's answering machine on Smith Street in Perth Amboy, repeating what she had told her cousin, Alexandra, said Yamina Nina, 18, a close friend.
Nina said her friend also sent a text message to a sister, Nives Contreras, in El Paso, Texas. Last month, Jerlisa Contreras sent her 6-year-old son, Damir, to live with the younger sister because he was having trouble acclimating to school in New Jersey.
"She wanted a better future for him," said Jerlisa Contreras' youngest sister, 11-year-old Jennifer Contreras.
The girl said her sister had once been fun and outgoing. Lately, however, Jerlisa Contreras had seemed troubled.
"She had stress from boyfriend problems, but she kept it to herself," Jennifer Contreras said. Her older sister "held her anger in and let things bother her very badly," she said.
Jerlisa Contreras had always been one to internalize emotions, friends and relatives said.
"She was a good mother, but she was in her own world, and she dwelled on things," said Maritza Sanchez, 51, a close family friend.
In recent days, she'd been depressed about her breakup with Alyssa's father. While the prosecutor declined to release the man's name, Contreras' relatives identified him as Shawn Scott, 33. They said Scott lived in either Newark or Irvington.
Last weekend, Contreras became furious when she discovered Scott was involved with another woman, friends said. Sometime Saturday, Contreras confronted the woman, and the two came to blows, said Colon, the neighbor and friend.
When Contreras recounted the story Sunday at Colon's apartment, she had scratches across her face, Colon said.
Contreras acted on her rage yesterday morning. Kaplan, the Middlesex County prosecutor, said the woman drove her 1992 Chevrolet Corsica south on Route 35 and parked on the bridge's shoulder, near its highest point.
According to witness accounts, Contreras climbed from the car, leaned over the railing and dropped Alyssa before climbing over and jumping.
A fisherman standing on the shoreline heard a splash and called 911 on his cell phone at 10:52 a.m., Kaplan said.
Two Perth Amboy fireboats, filled with firefighters and police officers, arrived at the scene to recover the mother and her daughter. Emergency workers in one boat retrieved the mother. Personnel in the other craft pulled the baby from the water, Kaplan said.
Yesterday, Contreras' relatives grieved for both.
They said Alyssa had a full head of curly black hair and had recently learned to say small words. "Mama" was one of them. A few weeks ago, the child's ears had been pierced.
Contreras, the family said, worked as a cashier at a Woodbridge Hess station on Route 9. She liked to dance and go out on the town once in a while, they said.
The family immigrated to the United States in 1995 from the Dominican Republic, settling right away in Perth Amboy. It has not always been an easy life.
Two of Contreras' brothers died, and last year, a cousin, 35-year-old Ynio Perez, was killed in an explosion at a Perth Amboy acetylene production plant.
Contreras' aunt, Germania Perez, is the mother of Ynio Perez. Yesterday, she sat outside on a white plastic chair, tears in her eyes, her head bowed, as she reflected on the family's latest troubles.
"I hurt," she said. "I hurt for everyone. I hurt."
Staff writers Jim O'Neill and Chandra M. Hayslett contributed to this report.
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