Twelfth Death On Rikers Raises Heat On Federal Judge Set To Assign Manager

By Reuven Blau, The City

September 9, 2025

As a federal judge contemplates who to assign to take over managing Rikers Island, a Staten Island man has become the 12th person to die in a city jail this year, as he waited more than two months to be transferred upstate.

Carlos Cruz, 43, was found experiencing what appeared to be a seizure at the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers at around 7:49 p.m. Wednesday, according to the New York City Department of Correction.

Medical staff and emergency responders tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead at 8:35 p.m., the DOC said in a press release.

On July 2, Cruz was sentenced to five years in prison in an arson case tied to an alleged act of domestic violence, the Staten Island Advance reported.

He’s the fifth person to die in either a city jail or police holding cell over the past two weeks.

Detainees sentenced to more than a year, like Cruz, are supposed to be sent to a state prison as soon as possible. But many upstate facilities have struggled to accept new inmates due to a staffing crisis worsened by a three-week strike that began in February.

That has left dozens of city detainees languishing on Rikers. Sentenced people often say they prefer to get started in prison rather than endure the transient anxiety of Rikers.

“He was looking forward to going upstate,” Cruz’s defense lawyer, Michael Vitaliano, told THE CITY. “He was ready to do his time and come out better.”

His death was the third on Rikers in 12 days.

“The Department has tragically lost a person in our custody,” said Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. “We share our deepest sympathies with his loved ones. Every aspect of this incident will be investigated.”

Cruz suffered from some type of mental illness, according to his lawyer, who had him undergo a so-called 730 exam to determine if he was fit to stand trial.

The medical staff conducting those evaluations are essentially charged with answering one question: Does the person facing criminal charges “lack capacity to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his own defense.”

Cruz’s mental health condition wasn’t deemed serious enough to avoid a trial, according to court records.

The Staten Island district attorney initially sought a nine-year sentence, according to his lawyer. The DA reduced the sentence to five years but refused to offer any sort of mental health program as a potential alternative to incarceration, Vitaliano said.

Awaiting a Manager

His death comes as Laura Taylor Swain, the chief district judge for Manhattan federal court, considers who to appoint as the so-called remediation manager to take over parts of Rikers, which she first ruled she would do in May.

Late last month, the two sides in the long-running case — Legal Aid Society and the DOC — submitted their preferred candidates. Swain gave the parties nearly the entire summer to make their recommendations.

She has not publicly said when she will make her final decision and has specifically kept the potential candidates’ names off the public docket.

City jail deaths have fluctuated in recent years: nine were recorded in 2024, five in 2023, and a staggering 19 in 2022, Mayor Eric Adams’ first year in office. In 2021, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, 16 people died in city jails.

Advocates blasted the latest death as part of a growing crisis inside the city’s jails and police precinct lockups.

Close-Rikers advocates rally ahead of a Board of Correction meeting in Lower Manhattan, Jan. 10, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

“What’s it going to take? Five people have died in custody in the last two weeks,” said Jerome Wright, co-director of the HALT Solitary Campaign and a former Rikers detainee himself. “Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul have doubled down on a racist system to lock up more and more people and leave them to die.”

Wright noted that the jail population has spiked by 33% from 5,354 when Adams took office in January 2022 to 7,132 as of Wednesday.

That has forced city jail officials to ask a jail oversight board to expand bed capacity in certain Rikers dorms from 50 to 60 beds.

“Sadly, [jail officials] have had willing partners in local prosecutors and judges,” Wright added. “The only answer is to free people, close these deathtrap jails, and build a system of equal justice that promotes healing and safety, not torture, despair, and death.”

Sad Endings

As for the other deaths, Jimmy Avila, 44, died in the West Facility on Saturday, according to DOC officials. He passed away around 24 hours after he was charged with fatally shooting the super in his Bronx apartment building and wounding two other people.

On Aug. 23, Rikers detainee Ardit Billa, 29, was found dead inside his cell also at the George R. Vierno Center, where Cruz died. Billa was housed in a specialized mental health unit where he was supposed to get boosted counseling and medical care.

But he was found with feces on his body and hadn’t left his cell in days, according to multiple jail sources.

A captain and two officers have been suspended as investigators probe whether required checks were missed or if warning signs of medical distress went unnoticed, THE CITY reported last week.

The crisis of in-custody deaths extends beyond Rikers: In the past week, two men died while in NYPD custody. Musa Cetin, 29, who had been arrested in Midtown Manhattan for operating an unlicensed pedicab, was found hanged in his cell after officers conducted a routine check.

He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital and died two days later.

On the same night in Brooklyn, Christopher Nieves, 46, died of an apparent heart attack after being taken into custody for allegedly shoplifting food from a Whole Foods. He collapsed in a holding cell at the Kings County Criminal Court and was pronounced dead on the scene.

Both cases are under investigation by the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division, and official findings are pending from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

As for Cruz, his lawyer said he lost a child a few years ago and blamed his partner for that death. He appeared to be headed in a better direction after he agreed to the plea deal, he added.

“He was so polite to the judge,” Vitaliano said, “it was a different tenor than his previous court appearances.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.