Two Men Die in NYC Jail Custody on Same Day, Bringing Year's Toll to Seven
Officials are investigating a suspected suicide and a possible overdose, as the city's jail population remains far above where it stood at the start of Mayor Adams's tenure.
By Jacob Leary · · Originally reported by New York Daily News
Two men died in New York City Department of Correction custody on Friday, June 20, and authorities are investigating both deaths, according to correction sources.
The first was Benjamin Kelly, 37, who was found in medical distress in a cell at the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island by an officer at about 3 p.m. He was declared dead at 3:31 p.m. Kelly had been arrested on May 20 in Queens on low-level petit larceny and trespassing charges, meaning he was being held in jail despite facing only misdemeanors.
The second man fell into medical distress around 4:30 p.m. while riding a bus to the Taylor Center, which commonly serves as the intake facility where new admissions are processed. Staff tried to revive him in the center's sally port, but he was declared dead at 4:49 p.m., 19 minutes later. Officials said he had just been released from a hospital and was entering custody for the first time.
According to the sources, one death is being investigated as a suicide and the other as a possible overdose.
Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Council's Criminal Justice Committee, called the news "heartbreaking" and offered condolences to the families. She said the deaths underscore "the urgent need for Mayor Adams to treat the crisis at Rikers with the seriousness it demands while he remains in office." Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said the life of every person in the department's care is valued, called Friday "profoundly tragic," and promised the incidents would be investigated thoroughly.
The two deaths are the sixth and seventh jail-connected fatalities of 2025. The city recorded five in 2024, nine in 2023, 19 in 2022 and 16 in 2021.
They come as the jail population climbs. It topped 7,000 in March for the first time since 2019, and stood at 7,562 on Friday, which is 39% higher than the 5,430 recorded on Jan. 7, 2022, days after Adams took office. Correction officials have blamed the increase on the aftermath of a 22-day state prison guards strike. Roughly 2,000 state guards who did not return to work were fired, and the resulting staffing shortage led state prisons to stop accepting new admissions. With Board of Correction approval, the department has reopened or expanded housing areas in at least three men's jails and moved more men into the Rose M. Singer Center, the women's jail.
Last month, the department asked the Board of Correction to allow mail to be opened outside detainees' presence to check for contraband, arguing that drugs were arriving on drug-soaked paper. The board rejected the proposal. In early May, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain found the city in contempt of court orders aimed at curbing violence and use of force in the jails, and ordered the hiring of a "remediation manager" to oversee a significant portion of operations. The ruling was a major setback for the Adams administration, which had argued the problems could be handled internally despite years of evidence to the contrary in dozens of federal monitor reports.
Earlier deaths this year include Ramel Powell, 37, who died Feb. 19 at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center of a synthetic marijuana overdose, and Terrence Moore, 55, who suffered a seizure before a court date and died Feb. 24. Ariel Quidone, 21, collapsed March 13 at the Robert N. Davoren Center with untreated appendicitis and died two days later; his family alleges he would have lived had he been treated sooner. Sonia Reyes, 50, died March 20, and Dashawn Jenkins died March 31. The causes of death for Moore, Reyes and Jenkins remain under investigation.
