Demands answers after son’s suicide
The mother of a Rikers Island detainee who hanged himself pleaded Tuesday for answers to how her son was able to take his life under the noses of city jailers — and said the Department of Correction didn’t even tell her of his death.
“I had to find out he was dead on Facebook,” said Tamara Carter, who got the word from a woman her son knew online.
Carter didn’t hear from correction officials until William Wagstaff, a lawyer representing her and other members of Brandon Rodriguez’s family, called a top department official.
“It’s disgusting we’re not getting information,” Wagstaff said.
Carter, 43, told the Daily News she last talked to her son Aug. 2, two days before he was arrested on Staten Island.
“He wanted to know if I was at home,” Carter said. “He was supposed to come back later that day. He had been staying with a girl he met. I didn’t know that he had been arrested.”
Cops on Aug. 4 arrested Rodriguez, 25, a Westchester County resident, on charges he choked a gal pal and smashed her cell phone. He was sent to Rikers after a Staten Island judge set a $15,000 bail bond he couldn’t make.
Six days later, on Aug. 10, he was found dead at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center.
“First and foremost, I want to know how my son passed away, where he was,” Carter said. “It’s not going to bring him back, but I want to know. And no one from DOC called me.”
Before he died, Rodriguez had complained to a friend about overcrowding in the Bantum center and threats from other detainees.
“He seemed to feel that the inmates felt they had more latitude because of staff shortages, and was concerned whether correction staff took it seriously,” said Wagstaff.
On Aug. 8 — two days before Rodriquez hanged himself — he suffered an orbital fracture, or broken eye socket — an injury that usually occurs in a fight or in an encounter with officers, sources said.
It was not clear whether he was treated on Rikers or sent to the hospital at that point.
But the time line from the Aug. 8 injury to Rodriguez’s death also is unclear. DOC sources said at some point, there was a documented use of force by staff involving Rodriguez — but the sources did not know when that happened, or other details of the incident.
Rodriguez was found about 12:40 a.m. Aug. 10 in a seated position, hanging by a ligature in a shower at the jail, the sources said.
That account appeared to conflict slightly with a prior account that Rodriguez hanged himself with his T-shirt in an intake cell while he was awaiting transfer to a medical clinic, though there is a shower cell in the intake area. Inmates are placed in the intake area when they are being transferred from one section at Rikers to another.
“Clearly, there are glaring inconsistencies emerging in the accounts that have been given,” Wagstaff said. “If you are in intake and the allegation is that there was a need for medical assistance, those two factors mean that he should have received the most attention that a detainee would have received in that situation.
“It’s a resounding failure by the Correction Department and it looks like neglect,” Wagstaff said.
He said the case points to the need for the closure of Rikers. “The cries for the closing of
Rikers Island should be louder than they have ever been,” he said.
DOC officials declined to comment.
The city medical examiner said Rodriguez’s cause of death is “pending further study.”
Six years ago, in January 2015, Rodriguez, then 19, was slashed six times and beaten in the George Motchan Detention Center on Rikers Island by members of the Patria gang, court records show. He suffered 18 puncture wounds to his chest, back and face.
He sued the city and won an $80,000 settlement, records show.
Carter remembered her son as bright and gifted. He grew up in the Bronx and attended Mount Vernon High School. in Westchester County “He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance,” she said. “He had himself a voice and if he worked hard enough, he had a future. He was very lovable and had the gift of gab.”
Instead of watching him explore his future, Carter has had to arrange his funeral, which will be held Saturday. “I’m still in disbelief, his siblings are devastated,” she said. “The thought of him hanging himself, it never occurred to us.”