A judge sentenced Ryan Cato to 25 years to life in state prison Friday for brutally beating his girlfriend’s 10-year-old son to death, hitting the little boy so hard his internal organs ruptured.
Cato was found guilty last month of murder in the March 6, 2021, death of Ayden Wolfe, who was found naked with bruises across his body, broken ribs and lacerations to his spleen, liver and kidneys.
“Isolated from teachers and other responsible adults because of the pandemic, 10-year-old Ayden Wolfe was enduring horrific violence at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. “Ryan Cato brutally abused him, eventually killing Ayden in his own apartment. While today’s sentencing will not bring back this innocent child, I hope it gives his loved ones a sense of comfort and closure in this abhorrent crime.”
Obtained by Daily News
Ayden Wolfe, 10.
The abuse started in January 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, shortly after Cato moved in with the boy’s mother at their W. 131st St. apartment in Harlem, prosecutors said during the trial. Cato would make Ayden hold weights above his head while Cato punched him, according to court documents.
The boy’s father, Darnell Wolfe, and neighbors and loved ones, speaking to the Daily News in 2021 after Ayden’s death, described him as a bright, tech-savvy child, wise beyond his years. He had been attending school remotely due to the pandemic and had not interacted with teachers, counselors or school nurses in months, jurors heard during the trial.
Obtained by Daily News
Darnell Wolfe with his son, Ayden.
The jury heard from Ayden’s mother Aquisha Johnson, who cooperated with the prosecution against Cato. In a plea deal, she previously pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection to her son’s killing.
She admitted to sometimes hitting the boy with a belt and forcing him to hold weights as “discipline,” and said the abuse he suffered at her boyfriend’s hands became more severe over time, to the point Cato would “fight” the child as forcefully as he would hit a grown man, jurors heard.
Prosecutors told jurors that the beatings that ultimately killed little Ayden began the day before his death. A doctor from the city Medical Examiner’s Office said that a piece of the boy’s liver broke off inside his abdomen and the casing of his kidney had begun to come off, like the peel of an orange. The M.E. ruled that the boy had died from battered child syndrome.
The child had multiple injuries to his ribs in various states of healing, serving as further evidence of a prolonged period of abuse, Assistant D.A. Jonathon Junig said.
“It looks like he a was hit by a train, but this is from the defendant pummeling him over and over again,” the prosecutor said during the trial, pointing to disturbing photos taken during the boy’s autopsy. “If this isn’t depraved, what is?
