Dad accused of throwing 5-year-old off bridge in Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -- The father of a 5-year-old girl pulled his daughter from the back seat of his car and then threw her off the approach to the Sunshine Skyway bridge into the bay about 60 feet below, police said Thursday.<br /> <br /> It wasn't clear why 25-year-old John Nicholas Jonchuck threw his daughter or whether she was alive at the time, though an officer who witnessed it said he "thought he heard the child scream," St. Petersburg police Chief Anthony Holloway said at a news conference.<br /> <br /> Police records said Jonchuck was separated from Phoebe's mother and the two had a rocky relationship, with Jonchuck trying to get a restraining order against her as recently as last month. Jonchuck had custody of Phoebe and they lived with his father in Tampa.<br /> <br /> Phoebe's mother, Michelle Kerr, said she last saw her daughter and Jonchuck on Christmas Eve. They had a nice evening together and then he called child protective services on her and made false abuse allegations, she said.<br /> <br /> "He does the Jekyll and Hyde. It's just something that goes on in his head, he just wasn't wired right," she told The Associated Press.<br /> <br /> And yet, Kerr said that she never imagined Jonchuck would hurt Phoebe.<br /> <br /> "I always saw him as a good dad. She would always say, `I love you daddy.' She loved her dad," Kerr said.<br /> <br /> Both she and Jonchuck had several run-ins with authorities over domestic violence situations, according to documents.