A 31-year-old Rikers inmate died early Wednesday, the fifth person to die in custody since the beginning of the year inside the New York City jail.
Mary Yehudah died shortly after 5:00 am at Elmhurst Hospital, the Department of Corrections (DOC) said in a statement. The cause of death is pending, the DOC said.
Yehudah had been in custody at the Rose M. Singer Center since February 12 on a first-degree robbery charge.
“Ms. Yehuda’s passing fills us with sadness, every life here is precious,” Commissioner Louis Molina said in a statement. (The DOC spelled her name both “Yehudah” and “Yehuda” on her statement.)
The commissioner faces a fast-approaching deadline to address the ongoing crisis in the nation’s second-largest prison system to prevent a federal takeover.
Yehudah will be the 20th death of an inmate in less than 18 months, after the 15 who died at Rikers last year.
In a four-year span, from 2017 to 2020, Rikers recorded 24 deaths, according to an AP tally of DOC data.
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