Another Rikers death just hours after last
The city Department of Correction revealed Tuesday that an eighth inmate has now died in custody so far this year — its second fatality in fewer than 48 hours.
Albert Drye, 50, succumbed at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward around 11:30 a.m. after he was transported to the infirmary from Rikers Island earlier in the day, according to the DOC and jailhouse sources.
Drye, who had two open cases against him in Manhattan and The Bronx for assault and possession of a weapon, had previously been housed at the Eric M. Taylor Center since mid-May, records say.
His cause of death wasn’t immediately clear, but EMTC has recently been severely understaffed and grappling with a surge in slashings, stabbings and overcrowding issues in its intake unit, the Board of Correction revealed last week.
A BOC member said EMTC’s intake unit was so understaffed, most new admissions to the jail aren’t undergoing body scans to check for drugs, weapons or other contraband upon their arrival, compounding overall safety concerns.
Meanwhile, it was revealed on Tuesday that the previous detainee to die at the facility succumbed to a possible drug overdose after his housing area was left understaffed.
Anibal Carrasquillo, 39, was found unresponsive in his cell at the George R. Vierno Center just before 1 a.m. Monday while staffers were conducting their nightly “lock-in,” or the time all detainees are secured inside their cells for the night, records show.
Medical staff used two doses of Narcan, which is used to reverse opioid overdoses, on Carrasquillo, but he could not be revived and was pronounced dead about a half-hour later, according to jailhouse sources and records.
Fentanyl, a highly potent and deadly opioid, has been “circulating” through the jail, sources noted, and it’s been difficult to root out because of the agency’s ongoing staffing crisis.
Sources said lock-ins typically happen nightly at 10 p.m., and to have one after midnight is an aberration and shows there wasn’t enough staff in the housing area to get it done earlier.
Carrasquillo had just transferred to Vierno from the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Friday after city Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina suddenly closed Bantum, which allowed him to move its staff to the jail’s overcrowded intake unit.
At least two other detainees have also died of possible drug overdoses so far this year and another died by suicide.
The DOC didn’t return a request for comment.