Family seeks answers about son’s death on Rikers
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Donny Ubiera with a family member. Ubiera’s family sued the Department of Correction last month after the agency allegedly illegally refused to turn over records regarding the Bayside man’s death on Rikers Island in 2023. Photo via Sonya Levitova
By Jacob Kaye
The family of a Bayside man who died on Rikers Island last year is suing the city’s Department of Correction after the agency allegedly wrongly withheld information about the man’s death.
The family of Donny Ubiera, who died in the city’s notorious jail complex in August 2023, said in the lawsuit filed in mid-June – which has not been previously reported – that the DOC had illegally denied their requests for records related to Ubiera’s death, the 27th seen on Rikers Island since the start of 2022.
The Ubieras claim that the city agency didn’t follow the proper Freedom of Information law procedures after they denied the family’s request for a number of documents and videos that may shed light on the moments leading up to Ubiera’s death.
“Donny died almost a year ago,” said Sonya Levitova, an attorney with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP representing the Ubiera family. “It's pretty outrageous to me that Donny's family is mourning his death almost a year later, and has little to no information about the circumstances that surrounded his death.”
Ubiera, the eighth person to die in DOC custody last year, was found unresponsive in his cell around 5 a.m. on Aug. 22, 2023 after allegedly overdosing on methadone that he bought from another detainee being held in his housing area.
But details about the hours leading up to his death remain unclear.
According to reporting by City & State, other detainees being held in cells near the one Ubiera was being held in heard the Bayside man screaming for help around 1:30 a.m., claiming that he couldn’t breathe. However, no officers responded to his pleas or bangs on his cell door, the outlet reported. He wasn’t found by officers for another three and a half hours.
The city’s Board of Correction, the DOC’s oversight body, conducted an investigation into Ubiera’s death and wasn’t able to find evidence that Ubiera was calling for help in the lead up to his passing – but they also were unable to rule it out.
The civilian oversight board reviewed body-worn camera footage captured by an officer who walked through the housing area around 1:28 a.m. and found that the officer “did not show any signs of hearing anyone in distress.”
However, the jail’s surveillance footage does not capture audio, the BOC said.
In their FOIL request, the Ubiera family called on the city to turn over records that may shed light not only on whether or not Ubiera called for help, but on other factors that may have contributed to the 32-year-old’s death.
The FOIL request asked the city to turn over records related to Ubiera from the city’s Department of Investigation, including a video timeline of the incident. It also called on the DOC to turn over a preliminary health report about Ubiera, any incident reports they had, disciplinary history for staff that were on duty in the days before the death, reports on the facility Ubiera was being housed in, and emails sent by the DOC regarding Ubiera’s death to the chief medical examiner, the BOC and the Queens district attorney’s office, and more.
Less than a month after the FOIL was filed, the DOC denied the request, claiming that it couldn’t turn over the records because the matter was still under investigation. The Ubieras appealed the denial around a week later.
According to Levitova, the DOC was required to respond to the appeal within 10 days, either turning over the records or providing an explanation as to why the request was being denied.
The agency allegedly did neither, prompting the lawsuit filed last month.
“Our job here is to find out what happened,” Levitova said. “There's a reason that we made the request for documents in the Department of Correction’s possession that are about Donny, that are about his time at Rikers. His family would like to know what happened and we don't know yet.”
The Department of Correction declined to comment on the lawsuit and directed the Eagle to the city’s Law Department, which did not respond to requests for comment before print time.
Ubiera first entered Rikers on March 29, 2023 on murder charges after he allegedly committed three separate random violent attacks across Queens over the span of a week, including one that led to a man’s death.
Upon entering the jail, he was sent to a facility designated for detainees experiencing acute mental health issues. Ubiera was confused, disorganized and unable to work with his legal team, the BOC report on his death said. He was eventually found unfit to stand trial.
Ubiera had a long history of mental illness, including a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He also had a history of substance abuse, and had gone to several outpatient substance use programs before his incarceration on Rikers.
According to the BOC, Ubiera refused on several occasions to take medication meant to treat his mental health issues and was eventually placed in a mental health observation unit, the same unit he would eventually pass away in.
Last week, the Eagle also was the first to report on a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Joshua Valles, who died in DOC custody around three months before Ubiera’s death.
