Detainee dies, marking second Rikers death of the year
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Rubu Zhao, 52, died in Elmhurst Hospital on Tuesday evening after suffering a major injury on Rikers Island over the weekend. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
A 52-year-old Rikers Island detainee died in a Queens hospital on Tuesday, several days after he was severely injured inside the jail.
Rubu Zhao became the second person in Department of Correction custody to die this year, and the 21st detainee to die dating back to the start of last year. He is the 37th detainee to die dating back to the start of 2021.
Though his death is currently under investigation by the Department of Correction, and the cause of his death has yet to be determined, early reports suggest that Zhao, who was facing murder charges, allegedly jumped from an upper floor of a housing unit reserved for detainees with mental illnesses.
Being held at the George R. Vierno Center since December 2022, Zhao was “severely injured” after the fall on Sunday, May 14. According to the Daily News, the incident left him with a fractured skull.
DOC officials say that officers “immediately responded” and that Zhao was taken to Elmhurst Hospital, where he died Tuesday evening. The DOC did not send members of the media a notification of Zhao’s death and only responded to the Eagle’s request for more information on the incident after news reports on it were already published.
Zhao’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
Zhao last appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court on April 26 and was scheduled to again appear in court at the end of May.
“I am saddened by the circumstances that led to Mr. Zhao’s passing and I offer my condolences to his family,” DOC Commissioner Louis Molina said in a statement. “The health and safety of everyone in our custody is a top priority and a full investigation is underway to determine how this unfortunate incident occurred.”
As is customary in all in custody death cases, the state attorney general and the Department of Investigation will investigate Zhao’s death.
Last year, the first full year of Molina’s leadership of the jail, the department saw a record number of in custody deaths. The 19 people who died last year were the most to die in the jail complex since 2013.
In February, Marvin Pines, a 65-year-old man, died after experiencing a seizure inside a shower area in the North Infirmary Command building.
Criminal justice reform advocates condemned the DOC and Mayor Eric Adams for their management of Rikers Island on Wednesday following news of Zhao’s death.
Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, accused the mayor of paying “lip service to investing in mental health” while the “number of people with serious mental illness locked up at Rikers keeps growing under his watch.”
Around 20 percent of Rikers detainees have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, according to the New York City comptroller’s office. That number has grown nearly every month since Adams first took office in January 2022, as has the jail’s overall population, which has hovered around 6,000 detainees for the past six months, according to DOC data.
“Rubu Zhao is yet another casualty of a death camp that clearly cannot provide adequate care for people with mental health needs,” Mack said.
“Instead of putting real funding behind his rhetoric, the mayor is planning to fund more death and dysfunction at Rikers at the hands of DOC,” Mack added. “It’s time to exercise the leadership our city needs right now to get people the help they deserve, reduce the jail population, and get Rikers closed.”
City law currently dictates that Rikers Island close down as a jail complex and reopen as a renewable energy hub by 2027.
The current plan, which would include the relocation of detainees to borough-based jails, has been questioned on numerous occasions by Adams, who has yet to present an alternative.
Toward the end of last year, Adams convinced a group to begin looking into alternatives to the borough-based jail program, which he said will not be able to withstand the current number of detainees – the borough-based jails will, in total, be able to house 3,300 detainees at any given time.
“We have to have a plan B, because those who have created plan A, that I inherited, obviously didn't think about a plan B,” the mayor said in August 2022. “If we don't drop down the prison population the way they thought we were, what do we do – no one answered that question.”
Last year, the city began to miss a number of benchmarks along the path toward Rikers closure.
Population numbers increased for the first time in over a decade, and as a result, the DOC failed to execute several transfers of land and facilities back to the city, which is required every six months by the city’s Renewable Rikers law.
Instead of closing facilities, the DOC is actively working to open a previously shuttered jail building – the Otis Bantum Correctional Center, which may be used to house asylum seekers.
In March, the Department of Design and Construction proposed a contract between the city and a construction firm for the building of Brooklyn’s borough-based jail, the first new jail the city plans to complete. The details of the contract specified that it would run through 2029, two years after Rikers has been mandated to close.
“When is it going to stop?” said Victor Pate, the co-director of the Halt Solitary campaign. “We and others have been sounding the alarm about the particularly acute deadly crisis in NYC jails for over two years, let alone the decades-long crisis in prisons and jails across the state.”
“Relying on jails to address mental health needs is destined to fail. Yet, no one in a position of power has done a damn thing to release people to alleviate this crisis – not the mayor, the governor, judges, district attorneys, state legislators nor City Council members,” Pate added.
