Heartbroken mom of drowned NYC boy says the story is more sinister than the NYPD’s version

The distraught mother of one of two boys who died after falling into the Harlem River May 12 is challenging the unfolding story about the tragedy and believes the NYPD needs to look harder at the other boys who were down by the river that day.

Solid information about the events that led to the deaths of 13-year-old Garrett Warren and Alfa Barrie, 11, has been hard to come by. The NYPD says the two boys went down to the river to skip stones and were engaged in horseplay when they fell in. Some media reports have the much larger Garrett pushing Alfie in, though there’s been no indication of any malicious intent.

But Garrett’s mom, Dayshell Moore, told the Daily News she suspects something more sinister may have been going on.

“Boys from Harlem don’t skip rocks,” she said.

Moore said she has spoken with another teenage boy who was with Garrett and Alfie, along with others in the neighborhood. Based on those conversations, she believes the skipping rocks and horseplay story is just that —a story — and actually there was fighting going on.

She is calling on the NYPD to step up their investigations and make arrests. Moore said that police have not responded to her calls so she has taken it on herself to investigate what actually happened.

Police say that the case is still open and they’re asking for anyone with video or knowledge of what happened to come forward and share it with them.

Garrett’s body was found on May 18, floating in the Harlem River by the Madison Avenue Bridge. Alfa was discovered two days later on the other side of Manhattan, floating in the Hudson River near W. 102nd St.

“We want to find out exactly what occurred on that river,” NYPD Chief James Essig said. “We owe that to the family for closure. We also owe it to the public as well.”

Before heading down to the river, various security cameras around East Harlem picked up the boys at various locations around the neighborhood, including the Anas Fish Shop at E. 145th St. and Lenox Ave., where they bought an early dinner for the mom.

“I gave them my credit card to go buy it,” Moore said. “They were picking up fried fish, snow crab, fried shrimp, French fries and crab sticks.”

NYPD Chief Essig said that investigators pulled security video that shows Garrett riding a Citi Bike with Alfa and then shows them meeting up with a third boy.

Later, the chief said that video shows Alfa and Garrett going over the pedestrian bridge at E. 145th St. that crosses the Harlem River Drive, a four-lane highway. They climbed over a fence, according to Essig, and then, the mom says, crawled through a hole in a different fence.

Another boy is seen at E. 143rd St. and Fifth Ave. entering the park at 7:04 p.m., according to cops. He doesn’t emerge until two hours later, Essig said.

A few minutes later, an unidentified man told police that he was approached by a group of kids who told him, “two kids were pushing each other and fell in the water,” Essig said.

The man called 911, which triggered searches from the aviation and harbor units, but they didn’t find anyone in the water.

“These are 11- and 13-year-old kids. We believe they’re going down there — they wanted to skip rocks and do what 11- and 13-year-old kids do,” Essig said. “They were playing around down there. What happens in that 14 minutes, if there is video out there, which we believe there might be, we want to see that video.”

Garrett, who was 6 feet tall and weighed 215 pounds, was in the seventh grade at NEST+M, a highly competitive school on the Lower East Side. Kids test into the school in the third and sixth grades and only students that score in the 97th percentile are accepted.

Moore said that she wants the public to know that her son was a gentle boy, who reveled in his studies.

She said that her son loved studying science at NEST+M, which stands for New Explorations in Science, Technology and Math.

“He loved science. He loved biology. He loved engineering and coding. They teach kids how to write their own video games and apps,” Moore said.

She said that he was just a boy, who loved the cartoon “Ben 10″ and football.

Garrett played on the local team set up by the Abyssinian Church called the Crusaders.

“Just because he’s big, doesn’t mean he’s a mean kid,” she said. “He’s not a kid who’s a gang banger. He’s a big brother. “

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