Well more than 100 Department of Correction officers turned out Friday at an Upper West Side hospital to applaud the release of a female colleague who was seriously injured after she was punched in the face by a man held on Rikers Island who is accused of also previously attacking an MTA station agent.
The officers gathered at Mt. Sinai Morningside Hospital on W. 114th St. near Amsterdam Ave. to support Correction Officer Shamika Mitchell, 37, who walked out under her own steam in sunglasses and civilian clothes after six days in two different hospitals following the attack last Saturday.
“She’s doing much better than how she was, she’s in very good spirits,” said Benny Boscio, the president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association. “These attacks are happening too frequently to our officers, and we need valuable deterrents and consequences.”
Boscio called for legislation requiring those convicted of jail attacks to receive consecutive sentences instead of sentences concurrent to the crimes that landed them on Rikers Island.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
More than 100 correction officers applaud as Officer Shamika Mitchell walks out of Mt. Sinai Morningside Hospital on Friday. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Mitchell’s attacker, Robert Ray, allegedly ran up to her in the mess hall at Rikers’ Otis Bantum Correctional Center and slugged her without provocation, according to the criminal complaint. She fell unconscious and hit her head on the floor, suffering a broken eye socket, bruises and bleeding.
Ray, 34, was arraigned Wednesday in Bronx Criminal Court on charges of assault of a police or peace officer, assault and attempted assault charges. He was previously charged with sucker-punching an MTA station agent, also female, on Sept. 16 in an East Side subway station. He remains held without bail.
