Family looks for answers after Bronx man commits suicide on Rikers
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The family of Bronx man Jimmy Avila is suing the DOC for records related to Avila’s death on Rikers Island, which came six hours after he was brought to the dangerous jail complex. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
The family of one of the nearly half dozen men to have died on Rikers Island this summer said in a court filing that the city caused the man’s death by failing to get him mental health treatment before he committed suicide, according to court documents.
The family of Jimmy Avila, who died of aparent suicide in the city’s troubeld jail complex on Aug. 30, said that the city’s Department of Correction ignored repeated warnings about Avila’s acute mental health crisis and put him in a cell by himself, without consistent monitoring or protection.
Avila, who was arrested for shooting the superintendent of his apartment building in the Bronx, was dead six hours after he first arrived at Rikers.
“Mr. Avila was killed by the [DOC’s]’ failure to address his obvious medical and mental health needs, despite their well-established obligation to do so,” the filing reads.
The filing demands the DOC and city turnover a host of documents and records related to Avila’s arrest, court appearance and brief incarceration, including security camera footage from Rikers, the names of the correctional officers and health professionals who worked with him, Avila’s disciplinary record and any records of requests for mental health treatment made by the Bronx man or his attorneys.
The records will help Avila’s family determine whether they should file a wrongful death lawsuit or not, and who exactly to sue if they decide to move forward, the filing says.
Avila was arrested by the NYPD on Aug. 26 and taken to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx for treatment, according to the filing.
Three days later, he was taken to criminal court where he was arraigned on murder, attempted murder and weapon possession charges.
During the arraignment, his attorney, Francis White of the Legal Aid Society, asked that Avila’s file be marked to indicate that he needed medical and mental health treatment, the filing claims. White also allegedly asked that Avila be placed in protective custody.
But the DOC allegedly ignored those requests.
The filing claims that DOC “did not follow the proper intake procedures for an incarcerated individual experiencing acute medical and mental health crises.”
Instead, Avila was put in a cell alone and without the DOC “implementing any precautionary measures to ensure Avila was safe.”
Avila committed suicide a short time later.
The Legal Aid Society said after Avila’s death that their attorneys did not find out about the incident until the DOC had announced it in a press release and not through any formal communication.
“With each of these deaths, the city responds with the same boilerplate language, but conditions don’t improve, the people we represent continue to suffer, and these tragic deaths continue to mount,” a spokesperson for the public defender firm said in a statement after Avila’s death.
The Bronx man was the 11th person to die in DOC custody or shortly after having been released from it this year.
His death was followed by the death of a detainee named Carlos Cruz five days later. Cruz was the 12th person to die in DOC custody in 2025.
The death toll is the largest since 2022, when 19 people died.
Avila’s death came a week after the death of 29-year-old Ardit Billa, who was found unresponsive in the cell he was being held in inside the George R. Vierno Center, the DOC claimed.
A DOC captain and two correctional officers were suspended the day after Billa’s death, THE CITY reported.
The trio allegedly failed to perform the required check-ins on the cells in Billa’s housing unit in the hours before his death. Similar checks have gone unperformed in a number of deaths on Rikers Island over the past several years.
Well over 100 people have died in DOC custody over the past decade, 45 of them coming under Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure.
As the deaths mount, the population on Rikers has spiked, growing from a low point of around 3,900 in May 2020 to a high of approximately 7,650 in July of this year.
The DOC has appeared to struggle under the increase, which, in recent months, has largely been attributable to the fact that sentenced New Yorkers have been held on Rikers longer than they should be because state prisons, which saw a correctional officers strike earlier this year, are not prepared to take them.
The spike in deaths comes as a federal judge moves towards installing a receiver to take over major aspects of Rikers’ management.
The judge, Laura Swain, is currently reviewing applicants for the position, which would be granted major powers within the city’s jails and the DOC.
The receiver, which the judge has dubbed the “remedial manager,” will have the power to set a number of DOC policies, hire and fire staff and officers, and will report directly to the judge, not to the DOC commissioner or mayor.
The impending receivership is expected to begin less than two years before the city will be legally required to shutter the jail complex on Rikers and move detainees to one of the four borough-based jails being built as Rikers’ replacement. But the city is currently facing an impossible logistical hurdle – none of the jails will be built before the closure deadline.
The first jail isn’t expected to be completed until 2029, two years after Rikers is supposed to close.
