A 10-year-old boy in Harlem was murdered by his mother’s boyfriend, a man who allegedly had beaten him to death.
Ryan Cato, 34, has been charged with murder and endangering the welfare of a child. There were no reports on the status of the boy’s mother, who is unnamed.
NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison said young Ayden Wolfe was found unconscious and unresponsive Saturday when Cato called 911 to the apartment in the St. Nicholas Houses. He was pronounced dead hours later at Harlem Hospital.
The day before, officers had visited St Nicholas Houses after someone heard the ruckus and called 911. Instead of knocking on fourth-floor apartment doors to check on their concerns, authorities left.
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Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said Wolfe was “covered from head to toe with bruises. He had bruises on both arms and hands, both legs, his head, and his face, including behind his ears, his chest, his back, and even between the toes. The child had ribs broken on both sides of his body. Some ribs had multiple fractures.”
A vigil for the aspiring artist was held outside of the housing complex Sunday, where tenant association head Tyrone Ball encouraged neighbors to check on each other when they hear something wrong.
“These walls are thin enough to where you can hear a child being beaten,” Ball said. “You think it’s not your business, it is your business. It takes a village to raise a child, but the village failed.”
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Chief Harrison said in a press conference that Cato has a history of violence: “He was last arrested in December in Brooklyn, where he assaulted the mother of his children in their presence. An ACS case was opened for that case.”
In a statement, ACS said, “The safety and well-being of New York City’s children is our top priority. We are investigating this case with the NYPD.”
Wolfe also suffered a lacerated spleen, lacerated liver, lacerated kidney and a lacerated renal vein, with his official cause of death listed as “battered child syndrome.”
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Darnell Wolfe, the boy’s biological father, addressed the child’s mother in an interview with The New York Daily News: “You let the devil into this house.”
“She made a deal with this devil,” said the grieving dad. “It’s impossible that you don’t know what’s happening with our child.”
In a GoFundMe.com effort to raise $15,000 for Ayden Wolfe’s funeral expenses, he’s described as “an intelligent, tech savvy, fun, loving boy with dreams of becoming a Youtube Gamer.”
As of Wednesday morning, over $18,500 had been raised.
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