By Hurubie Meko and Jan Ransom at the NYTimes
April 1, 2025
In the first three months of the year, five people have died at the Rikers Island jail complex in
New York or shortly after being released from city custody, equaling the number of detainees
who died in all of 2024.
The fifth death, on Monday night, comes as Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is fighting to
keep control of the troubled complex and other city lockups that have been plagued by violence
and deaths in custody.
According to the Department of Correction, a person was found ill on Monday at 9:18 p.m. by
staff members monitoring the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island. The person, identified
by the authorities as Dashawn Jenkins, 27, was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later,
according to a news release from the department.
“The department is mourning the loss of someone in our care who passed away,” Lynelle
Maginley-Liddie, the agency’s commissioner, said in a statement Tuesday morning.
Mr. Jenkins died one day after his birthday, according to a joint statement from the Legal Aid
Society and the Queens Defenders.
“This tragic incident is a stark reminder of the ongoing human rights crisis unfolding at Rikers
Island, which houses more people with mental illness than any psychiatric hospital in the entire
city,” the statement said.
For lawyers and advocates for those incarcerated at the complex, Mr. Jenkins’s death is the most
recent example of why they have pushed for the closure of Rikers Island and for a federal judge
to install an outside authority, known as a receiver, to oversee the city’s jails.
“This is horrific news, yet it’s not surprising, given the worsening crisis and soaring death toll
this month at Rikers,” said Melanie Dominguez, organizing director for the Katal Center for
Equity, Health and Justice.
Hernandez D. Stroud, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York
University School of Law, said that the recent deaths could cause the federal judge overseeing
the complex to decide more quickly on whether to appoint a receiver.
Steady deaths can be an indicator of “severe institutional dysfunction and distress,” Mr. Stroud
said.
Since 2022, at least 38 people have died either while being held at New York City jails or shortly
after being released, according to city data.
The chief medical officer of the city’s Correctional Health Services stepped down recently and a
replacement has not been announced, raising concerns about the coordination of medical and
mental health services within the jails.
Mr. Jenkins’s death was reported less than two weeks after Sonia Reyes was found unresponsive
in her cell at the jail complex’s West Facility in the early morning of March 20. Ms. Reyes, 55,
was pronounced dead shortly after.
Five days before Ms. Reyes’s death, 20-year-old Ariel Quidone died in a hospital after collapsing
in a hallway at Rikers. Two other men who were being held in city jails died within the same
week in February.
Marc Battipaglia, a lawyer for Mr. Quidone’s family, said on Tuesday that Mr. Quidone had
likely been exhibiting signs of appendicitis before his death. His family hired lawyers to prepare
a lawsuit against the city.
“It’s more likely than not that he was displaying symptoms for days and he was ignored or
neglected,” Mr. Battipaglia said.
Mr. Quidone, who had an intellectual disability, had been held in a mental health housing unit
in which the cells faced a common area with a day room, giving staff members a clear view of
detainees.
Four days after his arrival, Mr. Quidone began complaining about severe stomach pain,
according to two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they did not
have permission to discuss the case. He begged the jail’s mental health employees for help at
least three times, they said. One of the people said that Mr. Quidone had alerted staff members
that he was in discomfort and had asked for a painkiller.
A mental health worker noted that Mr. Quidone was vomiting and sweating heavily, but did not
notify medical staff members, the people said. His requests for help went ignored from March 10
to March 13 when he was found unresponsive in a hallway of the housing unit, the people said.
He died at the hospital of sepsis caused by a ruptured appendix, the people said.