Authorities were investigating the deaths of two men, including one held in jail despite facing misdemeanor charges, in New York City Department of Correction custody Friday, correction sources said.
Benjamin Kelly, 37, was found in a cell in medical distress by an officer around 3 p.m. at the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island. Kelly, who had been arrested on May 20 on low-level petit larceny and trespassing offenses in Queens, was declared dead at 3:31 p.m., officials said.
The second man, officials said, went into medical distress around 4:30 p.m. on a bus in transit to the Taylor Center, which is often used as the “intake” facility where new admissions to the system are processed. Staff tried to revive him in the sally port of the center but he was declared dead 19 minutes later at 4:49 p.m.
The man had just been released from a hospital and was entering custody for the first time, officials said.
One of the deaths was being investigated as a suicide and the second as a possible overdose, according to the sources.
“The news of two more lives lost on Rikers is heartbreaking,” said Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, chairperson of the Council’s Criminal Justice Committee. “My deepest condolences go out to the families of those who passed. This underscores the urgent need for Mayor Adams to treat the crisis at Rikers with the seriousness it demands while he remains in office.”
The deaths mark the city’s sixth and seventh jail-connected fatalities in 2025. There were five jail deaths in 2024 and nine in 2023, after 19 in 2022 and 16 in 2021.
News of the deaths comes as New York City’s jail population has been rising sharply, in March cresting over 7,000 for the first time since 2019.
The jail population on Friday was 7,562, 39% larger than the population total of 5,430 that existed on Jan. 7, 2022, a few days after Mayor Adams was sworn in to office.
Correction officials have blamed the rising population on the fallout from the 22-day state prison guards strike several months ago.
Roughly 2,000 state guards who refused to return to work during the strike were fired, causing a staffing shortfall that forced state prison authorities to decline to accept new admissions — in turn, causing the jail population to rise.
With Board of Correction approval, the agency has reopened or expanded housing areas in at least three men’s jails, while also moving more men into the women’s jail, known as the Rose M. Singer Center.
“The life of every single person in our care is valued and Friday was profoundly tragic for the department as two individuals lost their lives,” said Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie. “Our deepest sympathies are with their loved ones. These incidents will be investigated thoroughly.”
Last month, the Correction Department urged the Board of Correction to approve a measure to allow the opening of mail outside of the presence of detainees, in order to check for drug contraband — arguing narcotics were entering via drug-soaked pieces of paper.
The proposal was rejected by the board.
In early May, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled the city was in contempt of court orders to address violence and the use of force in the system. She ordered the hiring of a “remediation manager” to oversee a significant portion of jail operations.
The decision was a major setback for the Adams administration, which had argued the jails’ problems could be handled in house, despite years of evidence to the contrary, as detailed in several dozen reports by the federal monitor appointed to track issues in the system.
The spate of deaths this year began with Ramel Powell, 37, who died in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Feb. 19 of an overdose of synthetic marijuana, or K-2, officials said.
Terrence Moore, 55, suffered a seizure before a scheduled court date and died in DOC custody on Feb. 24. His cause of death remains under investigation.
Ariel Quidone, 21, collapsed on March 13 at the Robert N. Davoren Center while suffering from untreated appendicitis and died two days later. His family has alleged that, had he been treated sooner, he would have lived.
Sonia Reyes, 50, died March 20, while Dashawn Jenkins died March 31. Their causes of death are also still under investigation.
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