Eye charges in Rikers tragedy
Aid delay in teen suicide try left him brain-damaged
A Bronx grand jury is weighing whether to bring charges against city correction officers for not acting quickly enough when a teenager attempted to hang himself at Rikers Island, leaving him severely brain-damaged, the Daily News has learned.
Nicholas Feliciano, 18, used a T-shirt and sweatshirt to try to hang himself from a hook in the George R. Vierno Center at Rikers on Nov. 27, 2019.
Eight Correction Department staffers, two city EMS workers and three others watched Feliciano for seven minutes and 51 seconds before a correction captain finally cut down him, according to an October report from the Board of Correction, which acts as an oversight body.
Feliciano suffered severe brain damage from oxygen loss and now requires special care in a rehabilitation facility at Bellevue Hospital.
“The circumstances of this incident are disturbing and starkly illustrate persistent issues in the city’s jails,” the Board of Correction found in its report, which noted that staff claimed Feliciano was “faking it.”
“[The case] highlights many troubling aspects of New York City’s jail system relating to young adults, mental health treatment, self-harm, dangerous intake conditions, and poor supervision. These conditions persist today,” the report noted.
Sources said the grand jury has heard testimony from a number of Correction Department staffers over the past two weeks.
The city Department of Investigation conducted the probe, and the grand jury presentation is being handled by the Bronx district attorney’s office. Patrice O’Shaughnessy, a spokeswoman for the DA’s office, declined to comment, as did DOI spokeswoman Diane Struzzi.
Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, defended the officers.
“We believe that our officers responded to this incident in accordance with their training and past experience in dealing with a very dangerous inmate population,” he said.
“When the facts are fully presented in this case, we are confident that they will be exonerated of any wrongdoing.”
Feliciano’s grandmother Madeleine Feliciano filed lawsuits in state and federal court in November 2020 against five named correction officers, one named correction captain, and other unnamed people, including a city paramedic. The suits are still pending and the city has yet to file a response.
The city Law Department did not comment on the litigation.
Feliciano was arrested in Queens on a parole violation in November 2019 and sent to Rikers. At that point, he had a documented history of past suicide attempts, cutting himself and mental illness, the family lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court states.
Feliciano was on suicide watch for 20 days in 2018 and six weeks in the Horizon Juvenile Center from 2018 to 2019, but the Correction Department’s screening process did not show him to be a suicide risk, the Board of Correction found.
On Nov. 27, 2019, Feliciano was hurt defending a friend in a fight with other detainees and suffered “lacerations to his face, abrasions to his torso, and contusions on his back.”
Correction Department officials split up him and his friend and Feliciano was transferred to the clinic at the West Facility. He wasn’t placed in a mental health unit, but in a cell alone.
That’s where he affixed a noose from a shirt and sweatshirt to a hook in the cell. The same hook was used in another suicide attempt six days earlier, the Bronx Supreme Court lawsuit alleges.
The Board of Correction report concluded that Feliciano flailed his arms for nearly two minutes before falling unconscious — with a correction officer several feet away facing his cell.
Over the next six minutes, five other officers and at least three other detainees, plus two city paramedics there to take someone else to the hospital, could see him hanging and did nothing, the Board of Correction report concluded.
At one point, one of the officers told Feliciano to “stop fronting,” or pretending, the report said.
Finally, a captain arrived, went into Feliciano’s cell, put handcuffs on one wrist and freed him from the makeshift noose.
Feliciano could not initially breathe on his own after the incident. He was transferred to the traumatic brain injury rehab facility at Bellevue Hospital in January 2020, where he remains now.
Within days of the incident, three officers and a captain were suspended.
“Had [those present] intervened to help Mr. Feliciano when they saw him attempt to commit suicide by hanging himself, Mr. Feliciano would not have such sustained severe and permanent injuries,” the lawsuit filed in state court alleges.
The Board of Correction also found long delays in transports to the clinic and hospital contributed to Feliciano’s suicide attempt.
An ambulance to transport Feliciano did not arrive for 33 minutes and he did not actually get to the hospital for another 52 minutes, the Board of Correction report found.
The Correction Department has in recent months issued several directives for responding to any attempted self-harm, including constant supervision of those who attempted or are at risk of self-harm or suicide, and training more than 170 people in custody as SPAs, or suicide prevention aides.