Rikers sees third death in two weeks
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An unnamed man died on Rikers Island on Wednesday, becoming the 12th person to die in Department of Correction custody or shortly after having been released from it this year. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Jacob Kaye
The rash of deaths on Rikers Island continued on Wednesday, when a man died after experiencing an apparent medical crisis in the jail complex that has claimed the lives of three people over the last two weeks.
The man, whose name was not immediately released by the Department of Correction but was reported by THE CITY as Carlos Cruz, allegedly had a seizure around 7:49 p.m. on Wednesday while being held in the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers. The DOC did not respond to multiple requests from the Eagle to confirm the detainee’s name.
Officers called doctors and medics to the housing area but the man was pronounced dead at the scene less than hour after being found, according to the DOC.
A dozen people have died either on Rikers or shortly after being released from it this year, including Wednesday’s death. The death toll nearly matches the number of deaths seen in the dangerous jail in 2024 and 2023 combined.
“The Department has tragically lost a person in our custody,” said DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, who has seen over two dozen people die in DOC custody since taking over the agency. “We share our deepest sympathies with his loved ones.”
Over 12 hours after announcing the man’s death to the media, the DOC had yet to release his name.
The man’s death comes five days after Jimmy Avila, a Bronx man who had been in the jails for less than 24 hours, died at Rikers’ West Facility.
Avila, who died on Saturday also of an apparent medical emergency, was charged in a triple shooting.
The Legal Aid Society, which represented Avila, said that the 44-year-old had long struggled with mental health issues and that he should have been put under close watch after entering the jail.
The Legal Aid Society also said that their attorneys did not find out about Avila’s death 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 over the weekend after Avila’s death.
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 unpreformed 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.
In addition to the spate of deaths, the DOC has had problems getting detainees to their medical appointments, the Eagle reported last month.
While the number of missed medical appointments on Rikers fluctuated by a couple hundred appointments each month through the first four months of the year, the DOC saw an increase of nearly 4,000 missed appointments in May. The issues continued in June, when over 17,260 scheduled medical appointments were missed by detainees, compared to the 12,623 appointments missed in April, according to city data. While the DOC saw a decline in the number of missed appointments from June to July, there remained over 2,440 more missed appointments in July than there were in April.
Seven of the last eight people to die in DOC custody were reported to have suffered a medical emergency before their death, including the unnamed man who died on Wednesday.
Criminal justice advocates, who have long been critics of the mayor’s handling of Rikers Island, blasted Adams on Thursday.
“Mayor Adams, how many more New Yorkers have to die at Rikers before you take action?” Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, said in a statement. “Mayor Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch have done everything in their power to send more people to this death camp, and now Rikers Island has claimed yet another life, the 12th death in custody this year alone.”
“Inaction and silence in the face of this humanitarian crisis is not only unacceptable, it is deadly. New York cannot allow this cycle of suffering to continue — the time for decarceration and the closure of Rikers is now,” he added.
The rising death toll comes as the city faces two existential crises on the island – the legally-mandated 2027 closure of the jails that is running years behind schedule and the impending takeover of major aspects of the jails’ management by a federal judge.
Last week, federal Judge Laura Swain, who ordered that the jails be put into a receivership earlier this year, received a list of candidates she’ll choose from to select the person who will assume a prominent role in running the jails. 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 with 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.
