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.
Since 2022, at least 38 people have died either while being held at the jails or shortly after being released, according to city data.
“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.
The death was reported less than two weeks after Sonia Reyes was found unresponsive in her cell at the 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 his cell at Rikers. Two other men who were being held in New York 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 retained lawyers in preparation for 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.