A 10-year-old boy was found beaten to death in his apartment one day after NYPD officers responded to a 911 call and left

• A 34-year-old man has been charged in the beating death of a 10-year-old boy.
• An autopsy said Ayden Wolfe died of battered child syndrome and was covered with bruises and cuts.
• The NYPD is investigating whether officers who visited one day earlier could have done more.

A New York City man has been charged with beating a 10-year-old boy to death, and the police department is investigating whether its officers could have done more to prevent the grisly killing.

Ayden Wolfe's body was found on Saturday, naked and "covered from head to toe with bruises and abrasions," a criminal complaint said. The child had multiple broken ribs and a lacerated spleen, liver, kidney, and renal vein. The medical examiner ruled that the cause of Ayden's death was battered child syndrome, the complaint said.

Ryan Cato, 34, was arrested on Sunday and charged with second-degree murder, according to court documents. Cato was identified as the boyfriend of Ayden's mother; the complaint said the three of them lived together in an apartment in Harlem.

The NYPD commissioner, Dermot Shea, said that on Friday, the day before Ayden's body was found, officers responded to a 911 call at the apartment building and left shortly afterward. Shea said that a neighbor had called for help after hearing banging and screaming in a nearby apartment, though the caller wasn't sure which apartment the noise was coming from, The New York Times reported.

Two officers listened at a few doors on the fourth floor and checked the hall and stairwell but didn't hear anything and left 12 minutes later, Shea said. The Times report said the officers did not appear to knock on any of the eight apartment doors on that floor and didn't receive an answer when they called the neighbor who had dialed 911.

The criminal complaint said a neighbor told a detective that they had heard "banging and thuds against the wall" for about 40 minutes on Friday, along with a man's voice yelling, "Do you want me to beat your a-- too?" The neighbor said they also heard a woman's voice yelling "stop" and a "soft voice moaning in pain." It was unclear whether that neighbor was the same one who called 911.

The complaint said the neighbor told the detective that on Saturday morning they heard banging and thuds again and the man's voice yelling, "You thought yesterday was something? You think this s--- is a game?" The neighbor said they heard the faint moaning again.

Shea told reporters on Tuesday that the police department would investigate the officers' actions from their visit to the building on Friday.

"To be clear, the person allegedly responsible for Ayden Wolfe's death is Ryan Cato," Shea said. "Nonetheless, I have directed the Office of the Chief of Department to review the police response on Friday to determine if the officers' actions were consistent with all department procedures and whether our current procedures need to be revised."