The Father of the dead 3-year-old, Ji-Aire Lee, in a Maryland park swing is speaking today.
We previously reported about the 24-year-old mother found pushing her dead son in a La Plata, MD park swing earlier in the week.
His dad, James Lee, has been left heartbroken and feels it could have all been avoided.
“I’m not saying she is an unfit parent, but at this particular time, she wasn’t fit to take care of our son,” Lee told Fox 5 DC.
The devastated dad had filed for sole custody of Ji-Aire, whom he described as his happy “little man,” days before the boy’s mother Romechia Simms was discovered pushing his lifeless body in a swing for several hours on Friday.
“It came out of nowhere for me,” Lee told NBC Washington.
Lee, who feared Ji-Aire’s mother may be suffering from a mental illness, said the tragedy could have been avoided if he had not been denied custody in court.
“I have a stable home for him to be at,” he told NBC. “I have a stable roof for him to be under, for him to have the life that he was supposed to have.”
Lee said he got a frantic call from Simms two days before the boy was found dead saying he needed to rush to Waldorf, Md., near where her mother lives, to pick the two up.
But she stopped answering his calls later in the day, and Lee was too late, he told reporters.
The 24-year-old Simms has been hospitalized since Friday, said Diane Richardson, spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff’s Department.
The autopsy has been performed, but the results have not yet been released, Richardson said.NY Daily News
The boy’s family has started an online fund-raising campaign in order give him a “proper homecoming” and funeral.
It has since surpassed its goal of $9,000.
