Aden Peter Haddad-Salah, 25, died unexpectedly in his sleep on Nov. 28 in Garrison, a few days before his 26th birthday.
He was born Dec. 8, 1997, and raised in lower Manhattan, attending Village Community School in the West Village. He was a strong student and participated in team sports, especially soccer and baseball. An avid explorer, Aden loved outdoor survival, hiking with his dog Bear and trying new foods.
His true athletic love, however, was mixed martial arts (MMA), which he pursued with passion and dedication during his high school years at Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn. He was an undergraduate English major at Lehigh University for two years, 2016 to 2017, where he was a Dean’s List student and a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.
He transferred to New York University in the middle of his sophomore year, continuing his English major with a minor in political science. When COVID-19 took hold, he left NYU and settled in Southern California, where he began working as an MMA trainer and coach at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) gym in Costa Mesa.
He was in his element at the gym and in California, and quickly established himself as a trainer and coach, winning a nationwide MMA Coach of the Year award in 2022. Soon after, he was promoted to fitness director at his UFC gym. He loved his work and put everything he had into it.
But he found the time to meet and fall in love with Cayla Ware, also an East Coast transplant, who was working with autistic children, and they soon moved in together. Since childhood Aden has loved dogs, so they adopted Riley and, less than a year later, Jello.
This past summer, Aden decided to return to NYU to complete his undergraduate degree and Cayla was willing to make the move. So in August, he and Cayla, by then his fiancée, packed their car with Riley and Jello and their possessions, and set off for New York. They settled in a family cottage in Garrison and Aden resumed classes in September.
The evening before he passed away, he was in good spirits, talking about his coursework and possible futures as diverse as opening a gym or law school. Those futures for Aden would not be, as he passed away that night in his sleep.
Along with Cayla, his fiancée, Aden is survived by his father, Isam Salah (Elaina Richardson) of Saratoga Springs; his mother, Betsy Haddad (Marshall Wood) of Mayfield; his sisters, Victoria Morse of Washington, D.C., and Olivia Haddad-Salah of Millbrook; and his grandmothers, Susan Haddad of Lexington, Kentucky, and Wadia Salah of Rocky River, Ohio.
A funeral service was held Dec. 4 at the Yorktown Funeral Home in Shrub Oak.
