Woman becomes fourth Rikers detainee to die in 2024
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A 55-year-old woman was found dead on Rikers Island on Thursday morning, marking the fourth jail-related death in a month. AP file photo by Ted Shaffrey
By Jacob Kaye
A 55-year-old woman was allegedly found dead inside her cell on Rikers Island early Thursday morning, marking the fourth time in a month – and the second time in a week – that a Rikers detainee has died.
Sonia Reyes, who was serving a year-long sentence on Rikers for a misdemeanor assault charge, was found unconscious inside a cell in the West Facility.
According to officials, an officer went to deliver Reyes her breakfast around 4:50 a.m. on Thursday morning. After the woman didn’t respond to the officer’s arrival, the officer called over a nurse who found Reyes to be unresponsive, the DOC claims.
Staff then attempted to revive Reyes until emergency responders arrived, according to the DOC. Life-saving efforts continued until around 5:30 a.m., when Reyes was pronounced dead.
According to records, Reyes’ sentence on Rikers Island – which mostly houses pre-trial detainees but also houses those serving a sentence of a year or less – began only around a month before her death, on Feb. 25.
The DOC provided no other information about the circumstances of her death. The cause of Reyes’ death has yet to be determined and is under investigation.
“Care for those in our facilities is a pillar of our mission and a loss of life weighs heavily on every member of service,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. “The department grieves this loss and shares our condolences with her loved ones. This death will be investigated thoroughly.”
Reyes’ death comes not long after 20-year-old Ariel Quidone suffered a medical emergency on Rikers Island, dying a few days later in a city hospital.
Quidone was in DOC custody for around 8 days before he died on Sunday, March 16.
The deaths of both Quidone and Reyes were preceded by the deaths of Ramel Powell, a 38-year-old, who died on Feb. 19 after being held in the city’s jail complex for 19 months, and Terrance Moore, a 55-year old who died five days after Powell after experiencing a seizure inside Manhattan Criminal Court, where he had been brought from Rikers Island by the DOC for a court appearance.
Reyes’ attorneys at Brooklyn Defenders said in a statement that they were “devastated” by Reyes death and called on city officials to do everything they can to prevent more people from being sent to Rikers, which saw its average daily population rise above 7,000 people for the first time since 2019 this week.
“As conditions continue to deteriorate, it is imperative that all options must be considered to avoid people’s incarceration at Rikers,” the public defender firm said in a statement. “All efforts to reduce the jail population must be explored to avoid preventable tragedies like this. Too many lives are at stake.”
The spate of deaths comes as the DOC and Rikers Island experiences a confluence of crises.
A federal judge is currently weighing whether or not to strip the city of its control of Rikers and hand it over to an independent third-party who would be answerable only to the judge and not the mayor. The judge, Laura Swain, said in November that she was inclined to make the extraordinary move, known as a receivership.
Should Swain rule in favor of receivership in the ongoing civil rights case known as Nunez v. the City of New York, the city could lose the right to manage major elements of the jail complex for years.
Swain began considering the last-ditch measure after she ruled that the city was in contempt of a consent judgement in the Nunez case, finding that the city had failed to tamp down violent conditions in its jails in the decade that the judgement has been in place.
Over the life of the consent judgment, over 100 people have died in the city’s jails.
Reyes’ death also comes a day after a landmark report from the Independent Rikers Commission found that the city will not be able to meet the legally-mandated 2027 deadline to close Rikers.
The start admission from the commission, which was re-formed by the City Council in the fall of 2023, comes after their original plan to close Rikers and replace it with four new borough-based jails saw little traction under Mayor Eric Adams.
Under Adams, the plan to build the borough-based jails has slowed significantly – all four jails won’t be built until five years after the closure deadline.
Additionally, the population on Rikers has risen by nearly 2,000 detainees since Adams first took office. The city has done little to reduce the population even though the borough-based jails will together only be able to hold 4,400 detainees.
In fact, the DOC is only preparing for more detainees. Earlier this month, the agency asked their oversight body, the Board of Correction, for permission to expand the number of beds at three of their facilities, which they said had recently seen overcrowding.
Among the facilities the DOC wanted to grow was West Facility, where Reyes was being held.
“When is this going to stop?” Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda said in a statement following Reyes’ death. “Rikers Island is a death camp, and filling it up can only result in more death.”
“Eric Adams has always had the tools at his disposal to safely divert people from this torture chamber, but chose not to,” he added. “Today, he has more blood on his hands, and another family is grieving.”
