Man becomes ninth person to die in DOC custody this year

An unnamed man died on Rikers Island on Tuesday. He is the ninth person to die in Department of Correction custody this year. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

By Jacob Kaye

For the ninth time this year, a person died in Department of Correction custody on Tuesday.

An unnamed man was allegedly found unconscious on the floor of a bathroom inside the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island Tuesday morning around 8 a.m., DOC officials said.

The officers allegedly called medics to the area and began to provide aid themselves. Medical staff continued providing aid once they arrived but the man was soon pronounced dead, according to the agency.

The DOC, which announced the death to the media prior to notifying the man’s family, did not immediately provide the detainee’s name, age or any other identifying information. They also did not expand on the circumstances surrounding the man’s death.

The man became the ninth person to die in DOC custody in 2025, and the fourth person to die in as many weeks.

“The entire Department is deeply saddened by a death in our custody,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with his loved ones. Every loss of life that occurs in our care is investigated and we will thoroughly examine what occurred in this instance.”

The death was reported to the federal monitor tasked by a federal judge with tracking conditions in the jails. The DOC said it also told the Board of Correction, state attorney general’s office, city Department of Investigation, State Commission of Correction, Office of Chief Medical Examiner and district attorneys about the death.

The man’s death less than two weeks after Christian Collado, a 51-year-old with terminal cancer, died in Bellevue Hospital under DOC custody.

Collado’s attorney, Judah Maltz, told the Eagle at the time that he had officially filed for the detainee’s release a day before his death.

According to the attorney, Maltz had made several informal requests to the Queens district attorney’s office, which had charged Collado – who was also facing federal charges in Pennsylvania – in a burglary and a separate drug dealing case, to drop the charges against the ill detainee.

However, the DA’s office rebuffed the attorney’s pleas.

“He couldn’t sit through a trial,” Maltz told the Eagle earlier this month. “Is he going to come into the courtroom on a hospital bed or a wheelchair and wear a mask on his face?”

“It would have been horrible,” he added.

Collado’s death came less than three weeks after the deaths of James Maldonado and Benjamin Kelly, who died a little more than an hour apart from each other.

Kelly was allegedly spotted by a correctional officer on Rikers Island having a medical episode around 3 p.m. on June 20. Though he was given medical aid, Kelly was pronounced dead around a half an hour later, according to the DOC.

Not long after, the DOC said Maldonado experienced a medical emergency while on a correction department bus heading to Rikers Island. He died around 20 minutes later.

The spike in detainee deaths comes as a federal judge has begun to map out a takeover of Rikers Island, where over 100 people have died in the past decade.

Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Laura Swain will soon receive recommendations and applications from those hoping to serve as the “remedial manager” at Rikers, otherwise known as a receiver.

The receiver will generally be tasked with tamping down violent conditions in the jails, a task Swain said the city had failed to do over the 10 years it's been operating under court orders stemming from a case known as Nunez v. the City of New York.

The receiver will answer only to the judge and, in a number of instances, supplant the power of the DOC commissioner and the mayor of New York City.

They will be able to make changes to DOC policies, procedures, protocols and systems related to the Nunez court orders; review, investigate and discipline officers who violate use of force rules; hire, promote and deploy staff throughout the jails; renegotiate contracts the city has with the correctional officers’ union, which has long opposed receivership; and ask Swain to “waive any legal or contractual requirements that impede [the receiver] from carrying out their duties.”

The remedial manager, whose powers will remain until the judge finds the city is in compliance with the court orders, will also be allowed to direct the DOC commissioner and any other DOC executive in regards to the Nunez orders.

Swain is expected to receive the names of all candidates for the role by the end of August.