Detainees dies on Rikers Island, third death there in 12 days

Jaweed Kaleem, New York Daily News on Sep 4, 2025

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NEW YORK — Another man held on Rikers Island has died in custody, officials said Thursday — the third detainee death in the city jails in 12 days and the 12th jail-linked death so far this year.

The man may have experienced some kind of seizure just before 8 p.m. Wednesday in the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island, the Correction Department said in a statement.

Medical staff responded but the man died at 8:35 p.m. The incident has sparked investigations by a number of agencies.

“We share our deepest sympathies with his loved ones,” Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said in a statement. The man’s name was not immediately released.

The department notified the Board of Correction, the state Attorney General’s office and a series of other oversight agencies.

Freedom Agenda Co-Director Darren Mack blamed the city’s policing strategies for increasing the jail population. The population has grown 39% from 5,354 in January 2022 to 7,492 as of Aug. 1

“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,” Mack said. “Inaction and silence in the face of this humanitarian crisis is not only unacceptable, it is deadly.”

The latest death follows that of Jimmy Avila, 44, who died in the West Facility on Saturday, the day after his murder arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court. Avila, who was charged with shooting to death the super of his apartment building and wounding two others, appears to have hanged himself, correction sources said.

The latest spate of deaths began Aug. 23 with the death of Ardit Billa, 29, also at the George R. Vierno Center. A Correction Department captain and two officers were suspended in the wake of that death.

Nine people died in the jails in 2024 following five in 2023. Nineteen people died in 2022, the first year of the Adams administration, and 16 in 2021 in Mayor De Blasio’s final year in office.

A report from the federal monitor tracking violence and use of force in the jails is expected to be filed by 7 p.m. Friday, according to a request filed by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.

Swain is poised to begin considering candidates to assume the role of outside receiver or manager following her historic ruling in May that an outside official was needed to oversee jail operations. In November, Swain found the city in contempt of a range of court orders regarding jail safety and conditions.

Swain’s order was made in Nunez vs. City of New York, the landmark 2011 class action lawsuit that led, with the support of the Justice Department, to a consent decree in 2015 and the creation of the federal monitor.