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Mother of boy shot and killed by cousin in Leavittsburg last year says punishment not enough
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The news about the devastating injuries suffered by Jesse Hayes, 15, from a shotgun blast to the face at the home of his cousin, Thomas Catalde, last May 9 came to Kenneth Hayes in pieces.
First Warren Township police told Kenneth his little brother had been shot, was being flown by helicopter to a Cleveland hospital and that their cousin had been taken to jail.
When Kenneth and other family members arrived at Metro Hospital that day, a woman told them Jesse had been shot in the head.
“Right there is where I lost all feelings for Thomas,” Kenneth said, reading a statement Tuesday during Catalde’s sentencing hearing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
“And once we got into the room where Jesse was, then I saw the shape that my little brother was in, and I became very angry and cried. I felt like I was in a nightmare.
“But day by day, night by night, in the ICU, I knew all of this was a reality. But when they told me that there was nothing they could do to save him and that the impact of a 12-guage was too powerful, a part of me died.” Jesse died May 11.
Kenneth Hayes said he never imagined that Catalde was capable of killing his little brother, but he did. And it destroyed the Hayes family.
“We lost our home and basically lost everything that was in our home except a few special items of Jesse’s,” Kenneth said. The family lived in Parma at the time of the shooting and has since moved to Lorain. Jesse was visiting the Catalde home when he suffered his fatal injury.
Through much of Kenneth’s statement, Catalde, 29, of Ruth Avenue, stood off to the side, a tortured look on his face.
Later Judge W. Wyatt McKay sentenced Catalde to 45 months in prison on guilty pleas to involuntary manslaughter and using weapons while intoxicated.
Chris Becker, an assistant county prosecutor, said the intoxication came from marijuana and oxycodone that were detected in Catalde’s blood. Catalde told police he shot Hayes in the face with a shotgun he recently had purchased because he didn’t know it was loaded and “was just screwing around.”
Becker said the drugs “obviously impaired [Catalde’s] ability to make a good decision about the gun.”
After the hearing, Jacki Sams, mother of Jesse and Kenneth, said she was frustrated that Catalde got only 45 months in prison and that he had not been more severely punished for running over another man with his car during an argument on New Year’s Eve 2014 on Homeview Drive in Leavittsburg.
Catalde was sentenced in April 2015 to a year of probation and 15 days in an alternative sentencing program for the New Year’s Eve offenses.
“Today he gets 45 months for taking a shotgun and shooting my son in the head?” Jacki Sams asked.