DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) — The man police say is at the center of a girl’s Amber Alert out of Durham made his first court appearance Tuesday morning.
Mitchell Grayson now faces several charges in connection with the abduction of his 4-year-old daughter.
That Amber Alert was issued Monday afternoon after Paisley Grayson was taken from the Hosiery Mill Apartments this past weekend. Late Monday night, the little girl’s father and suspect, Mitchell Grayson, carried the girl while surrendering at Durham police headquarters.
“I got a call from investigators and stuff and told me to come turn myself in if I ever wanted a chance to ever see my kid again,” he told CBS 17 before surrendering to officers.
Grayson is charged with aggravated assault, breaking and entering and injury to real property. A judge ordered a $25,000 secured bond.
“It is alleged that he did feloniously assault Blaise Thompson and inflict serious violent injury, that being lacerations to the skull,” an assistant read in Tuesday’s court appearance.
Durham police say Grayson broke into the apartment and badly beat one of the child’s family members before taking the girl.
“I promise that he’ll come home and he’ll stay with me,” Jennifer Joy, the suspect’s mother, told the judge.
The child’s mother, Candace Oldham, tells CBS 17 she was at work at the time Paisley Grayson was taken.
“When I got there, my cousin was in back of the ambulance with blood everywhere,” she said. “I walk upstairs and there’s blood all over my grandmother’s apartment.”
But Oldham’s own brother says Grayson is not in the wrong. CBS 17 caught up with him in court.
“It was a whole setup,” said Jon Farlow, Oldham’s brother. “That’s why I don’t agree with it. And she’s my sister to press the charges. And I don’t agree with it. So that’s why I’m here on his behalf.”
Farlow also said that Grayson took his daughter back home to Wilkes County.
“I believe in what’s right is right,” Farlow said. “What’s wrong is wrong. Family or not. That’s just how I am.”
“I think if you want to see your child, there’s a way about doing it and violence isn’t the way,” Oldham said.
The little girl’s mother says the Amber Alert was activated two days after the incident because she needed to get emergency custody, and the courts were closed.
