Woman Dies at Rikers Island, Marking Fourth Death in a Month Amid Rising Jail Numbers

A 54-year-old woman serving a year on Rikers Island for misdemeanor assault died early Thursday, with her son charging the notorious Queens detention center “killed her.”

The death, an apparent suicide according to sources, took place in West Facility and is the fourth fatality connected to New York City jails since Feb. 19. It comes amid growing concern as t he city’s jail population has crested over 7,000.

The death of the woman — identified by her son as Sonia Reyes — was stunning, he said, noting he’d spoken to her just two days earlier.

“She was fine,” Michael Campudoni said of his mother. “She had no thoughts about suicide and no means of committing suicide. That’s a complete lie.”

Sarena Townsend, a lawyer and former deputy commissioner for trials and investigations, called the spate of deaths “startling.”

“We’ve seen spikes like this in the past when leaders have either lost focus or placed the wrong people into management positions,” she said. “Here, I think the spike is related to the increase in population and the staff’s inability to manage all of the detainees. Gang activity and drug use is still rampant on the Island so the chaos on the island has not abated.

“Without proper accountability, and without managers who can handle the increase in population, deaths and constitutional violations are bound to happen,” she said.

Correction officials said the woman was declared dead at 5:23 a.m. They did not confirm the cause of death. Corrections officials said staff handing out breakfast did not receive a response from the woman at about 4:47 a.m. and tried to revive her with a medical team but were unsuccessful.

“My mother did not commit suicide,” insisted Campudoni, 34. “She was killed by Rikers.”

Reyes was serving a year in jail after pleading guilty in February to misdemeanor assault.

Reyes was jailed over a July 2023 confrontation with a man and another woman on Neptune Ave. in Coney Island, police said. Cops said a brawl erupted and Reyes stabbed the male, 37 in the ribs. He suffered a collapsed lung and was treated at Brooklyn South Health Hospital. Reyes was initially arrested for that assault Sept. 15, 2023. She entered the jail system Feb. 25, records indicate.

“She was my mother. I am her only family,” said Reyes. “Of course I loved her.”

In a statement, Daniel Ball, a spokesman for Brooklyn Defenders Services, noted Reyes had been in jail for less than a month.  The group urged the criminal justice system to reconsider sending defendants to Rikers Island.

“Despite the NYC Department of Corrections’ continued failure to protect the health and safety of people incarcerated in its jails, judges and prosecutors continue to send more and more people to Rikers,” the statement said. “As conditions continue to deteriorate, it is imperative that all options must be considered to avoid people’s incarceration at Rikers.”

The case, which marks the second death in five days connected to NYC jails,  is under investigation. On Saturday, Ariel Quidone, 20, who had been detained at Rikers for about a week, died in Elmhurst Hospital after being taken there Thursday.

Ramel Powell died Feb. 19 in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center and Terence Moore died Feb. 24 in a holding cell in the Manhattan courthouse.

Melanie Dominguez, organizing director for the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, said, “The crisis is hitting a tipping point this month with four deaths on Rikers. Instead of working to save lives, Adams is hellbent on sending more Black, brown, and low-income New Yorkers to Rikers, and now the jail population is over 7000 for the first time since 2019. This is unacceptable.”

The West Facility started as the communicable disease facility, but has since mushroomed into a hodgepodge of ailing people, difficult to handle detainees and a number of dorm units that were recently expanded. The total population is now in the hundreds.

“Care for those in our facilities is a pillar of our mission and a loss of life weighs heavily on every member of service. The department grieves this loss and shares our condolences with her loved ones. This death will be investigated thoroughly,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said.

The death is the first indication women were also being housed in West, which has been a male facility for decades. It was not clear Thursday how many women are housed there instead of the Rose M. Singer Center, which was built as a women’s jail but now also houses men in a high security section.

Citing overcrowding, DOC received approval March 11 to expand 12 dorms in the West Facility from 50 beds to 56 beds — one of three jails where they asked to increase the population.

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Figures posted by the Vera Institute show the jail population has gone over 7,000 for the first time in years. Former DOC Commissioner Louis Molina predicted it would reach that number by the end of 2024 and was only a few months off.

On May 2, 2020, the height of the pandemic-era releases, the system reached a decades-low of 3,828, the Vera figures show. Since then, the population has grown steadily, except for a dip from September 2021 to December 2021. As of Wednesday, the total was 7,056, with 4,006 or 57% having a diagnosed mental health issue .

The Adams administration has characterized the population increase as unavoidable given the serious charges facing many of the detainees. But on Wednesday, the Independent Rikers Commission in a report called the jail population “artificial inflated” due to court backlogs and the high mentally ill population.