Dad dropped screaming daughter, 5, off huge bridge to die after branding her a ‘demon’

A father who called his daughter a demon then hurled her to her death from a huge bridge is set to tell jurors he was insane at the time.

John Jonchuck’s lawyers will tell jurors that he dropped his daughter Phoebe off the 60-foot high Dick Misener Bridge Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa, Florida, while of unsound mind, and that the killing was not malicious.

Jonchuck, who killed Phoebe in January 2015, is set to stand trial for first-degree murder from Monday.

He drove up onto the famous bridge, which runs over Tampa Bay, then parked his car in front of a cop.

Jonchuck picked Phoebe up off the back seat and then casually walked over to the guard rail, before dropping her off the edge.  The stunned cop said he heard Phoebe scream as she fell to her death.

A subsequent autopsy revealed that Phoebe survived the initial plunge, with hypothermia caused from being in the cold water later contributing to her death.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, 29 year-old Jonchuck’s attorneys will make an insanity defense, with the killer set to face life in jail or a psychiatric facility regardless of whether he is convicted or cleared.

He was previously declared unfit to stand trial over Phoebe’s death, with doctors insisting that Jonchuck’s medication means he is now sufficiently competent to face a jury.

During a preliminary hearing in December 2018, a court heard how Jonchuck claimed ‘voices’ told him to kill his daughter.

In that interview with a doctor held in October 2017, he added: ‘I was hearing voices saying that if me and Phoebe didn’t die, everybody was going to go to hell.’

Asked by the psychiatrist who he thought was going to die, Jonchuck answered: ‘Everybody in the world.’

In the days before Phoebe’s death, Jonchuck is also said to have carried around a large Swedish Bible and become obsessed with spreading salt around doors to try and ward off evil.