A 28-year-old woman has been arrested and charged in the murder of an elderly man who was found Monday in his Staten Island apartment with the phrase “I touch little girls” written across his chest.
Rene Ayarde, who was once 80-year-old Robert Raynor’s home health aide, was apprehended on Nov. 12 in New Jersey and is being charged with murder, manslaughter, and assault in connection to the July 19 death, according to NBC 4. A spokesperson from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said they ruled the death a homicide and that the man died of blunt trauma to his head and torso.
Police say the words “I touch” were also written on one of his feet. “I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5” was also reportedly written on his stomach, in what appeared to be black marker.
After Raynor was found, Ayarde allegedly beat her 3-year-old daughter and was reportedly charged with child abuse, and police didn’t say she was a suspect in the death until Monday. Authorities say they found injuries on her daughter’s face and knees, all healing at different rates, and witnesses saw Ayarde “pick up a young child and drop the child to the concrete” and “throw a full water bottle at the child’s face.”
The 3-year-old reportedly told cops that she was “outside and mommy threw me on the floor.”
Raynor was not a registered sex offender, authorities said, and his daughter defended him to the New York Daily News. The man has had 24 prior arrests to his name.
“There was a banging around the night before, like someone throwing someone around,” neighbor Isaac Williams previously said to the New York Daily News. “I saw him lying there. I didn’t get too close. The man was just dead. What was written on his chest was just disrespectful. I don’t believe it. He was an old man. He couldn’t even get around.”
