A search of New Jersey’s Raritan River has intensified tonight, as divers, boats, and helicopters look for a 3-month-old girl in the water, after her father told authorities that he threw his daughter off a bridge. Police said that Shamsiddin Abdur-Raheem, 21, abducted his daughter from her grandmother’s house in East Orange Tuesday, after choking and punching the child’s grandmother. When Abdur-Raheem was found in a relative’s home by police in Winslow Township four hours later, he told them he had “thrown his daughter off a bridge into the river.”
At the time of the kidnapping on Tuesday, the child’s mother, Venetta Benjamin (who has sole custody of the child), was in a Trenton courtroom filing for a restraining order from Abdur-Raheem. Abdur-Raheem faces charges of kidnapping, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and child endangerment, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. He is being held on $700,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning.
