Prosecutors drop abduction charge against Tristan King’s great-aunt

The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office on Wednesday dismissed the most serious charge against the woman accused of helping 9-year-old Tristan King hide from authorities for nearly six months while he was considered missing.

Baltimore Police arrested Denise Day, 60, last month on a charge of felony harboring and abducting a child under 16 as well as a lesser misdemeanor charge. Now, only the misdemeanor remains, and a city judge released Day from custody after she’d spent the last 28 days in jail.

Day is Tristan’s great-aunt and was with her grand-nephew when police found him in mid-March at a home in the Curtis Bay neighborhood. Tristan had been missing since Sept. 24, when he ran from a Department of Human Services caseworker who was driving him to an office. Until he was found, Tristan had been missing longer than any child his age in Maryland.

Tristan’s case, documented extensively by The Banner, illustrates the shortcomings of Maryland’s child welfare system. Gov. Wes Moore and Mayor Brandon Scott pledged to review their own agencies and fix what went wrong.

So far, Day is the only person publicly facing consequences for what happened to Tristan. When police arrested her, they said she “confessed to harboring her 9-year-old nephew and assisting him in eluding officials for more than five months” during an interview with missing person detectives.

Shackled and wearing the customary pink sweatsuit with “DPSCS” emblazoned on the back, Day said little in court during her brief hearing other than to acknowledge the judge’s remarks.

The felony abduction charge had to be dismissed because Maryland law calls for relatives to be charged with misdemeanor under a different statute, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates wrote in an email Thursday afternoon. Bates said his office is reevaluting the case and will determine if new charges will be brought.

The prosecutor in the case wanted Day to remain in jail, but District Court Judge David B. Aldouby released Day from custody because the misdemeanor she’s charged with carries a maximum sentence of 30 days.

Aldouby said he read nothing in the record of the case that alleged that Tristan had “been physically harmed.”

“She had no malicious intent,” Day’s attorney, a public defender, said.

Several people said Day would provide marijuana to her nephew and encourage him to smoke it in order to calm him down.

Aldouby told Day she could have no contact with Tristan, who is in foster care, until her criminal case was resolved. Even if Tristan were to run away and show up wherever she was staying, Day was not to speak to him.

“I understand,” Day replied.

The only other conditions attached to her release were that Day show up for her next hearing in June. The address Day gave the court for where she would live until her next hearing, in Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood, does not exist, according to city property records. The houses on either side of the address she gave are listed as vacant.

At an earlier hearing in late March, a different judge said they would consider releasing Day into an inpatient drug treatment center. Aldouby ordered other people in court Wednesday to participate in similar programs as a condition of their release, but did not do so for Day.

Day told a pretrial services officer that she’d used heroin daily for 20 years, including the day before her arrest.

“The reality is the defendant has a significant drug problem. That is by her own admission,” Judge Rachel E. Skolnik said at the earlier hearing. “I have really grave concerns.”

Banner reporter Dylan Segelbaum contributed to this report.