Deaths of 2 inmates are under investigation
COXSACKIE, N.Y. >> State police are investigating two recent violent deaths at the Greene Correctional Facility, officials said Friday.
In the first case, Delmus R. Tanner Jr., 38, died on Nov. 13, 2018, due to “strangulation by another” person at the medium-security state prison, according a death certificate provided to the Freeman by Tanner’s exwife, Ashley Farrell of Orleans County.
The second inmate, Anthony Myrie, 24, died at the facility on Monday following an “incident involving several” other inmates, according to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), which oversees the state’s prisons.
On Friday, state police Senior Investigator Bill Fitzmaurice said the Tanner case is likely to be presented to a Greene County grand jury within the next two weeks. He declined to provide any additional information about what he described as an “open investigation.”
Of Myrie’s death, Fitzmaurice said only that it’s being investigated.
Farrell, the mother of two of Tanner’s three children, ages 11 and 17, said: “I’m not going to rest until I know what happened to him. … I met him when I was 14 and, for better or worse, he was probably the biggest influence in my life. Divorced or not, he is my family.”
Farrell said she and Tanner divorced in 2016 and that he had another child who is 9 years old.
According to Farrell, sometime after dinner on Nov. 9, 2018, Tanner was found unresponsive in his cell. He was taken to the Albany Medical Center, where he was put on life support. Farrell said his mother was not immediately contacted and he “was alone in the hospital for three days.”
Farrell said Tanner was “in the big box,” a form of solitary confinement that he requested because he felt safer there after having been beaten at a previous facility.
Farrell said she intends to sue DOCCS and the Greene Correctional Facility on behalf of herself and her children for Tanner’s wrongful death. Her lawyer, Tom Mercure, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Tanner said Farrell had served two years of a fiveyear sentence for criminal sale of a controlled substance. He was “looking forward” to a parole hearing in August, she said.
“We were looking forward to him coming home and being a better father and a better citizen,” she said.
Myrie died “following an incident involving several incarcerated individuals,” DOCCS said in an email. The Albany County Medical Examiner’s Office will determine the cause of death, the department said.
State police declined to discuss Myrie’s death on Friday.
Myrie was jailed on Nov. 15, 2018, and was serving a seven-year sentence for sale of a controlled substance.
“I’m not going to rest until I know what happened to him. … I met him when I was 14 and, for better or worse, he was probably the biggest influence in my life. Divorced or not, he is my family.”
— Delmus R. Tanner Jr.’s ex-wife, Ashley Farrell of Orleans County