Fifteen people at the jail died in 2021. These are their lives — and how they came to an end. blissbroyard and lriordanseville report
2021 began with Rikers Island in a miserable state, with every indication that conditions would soon get much worse. COVID was spiking. The staff was depleted, and the jail was getting more crowded. In January, its population rose above 5,000 — an increase of more than 25 percent from the spring of 2020. After nearly two years without a suicide at the facility, a man hanged himself before the month was out. A gruesome incident followed in early March, then another suicide, then an overdose.
In July, the correction-officers union sued the city over working conditions. Officers told reporters they feared the place; more than 90 percent of the staff at Rikers are people of color, and nearly half are women, who endure harassment and assault. “We feel like we’re the forgotten souls,” union president Benny Boscio Jr. said. More than 1,000 correction officers had resigned in the previous two years.
Confronting the omicron variant will surely be Adams’s first order of business. After hovering around 1 percent for months, the COVID-positivity rate among detainees shot up to 17 percent on December 21. That means an end to in-person visits, curtailed programming, and, likely, more staffing shortages. Things will get worse before they get better.
A “hang up,” the correction officers call it. Each of them is issued a metal hook for the express purpose of cutting people down when they hang up. “The officers, they’re supposed to sharpen the hook once a month, but they don’t, so the blade is dull and they’re sawing away,” says Allen Chey King, a detainee who worked for a year as a suicide-prevention aide, making the rounds to disrupt attempts in progress. The protocol was to yell while holding up the body.
These pens are smaller than a regular cell, with no bed, toilet, or water. They are famously filthy — urine on the floors, feces smeared on the windows. Inmates have to call a guard to relieve themselves, except the guards are on the opposite side of the building, so they often don’t hear. Javier Velasco, 37 Illustration: Chuy Hartman Javier Velasco met Amanda Holland Van Stry in January 2016, when the radiator in her co-op needed fixing and Velasco, an assistant super, claimed the ticket. “I still remember the first time I saw you,” he wrote in the suicide note he left for Van Stry five years later. “I knew I was fucked. I fell in love with you that exact second.”
When COVID arrived, Velasco homeschooled the kids and took care of Van Stry, carrying her to the bathroom when her symptoms flared. But his work dried up, and he started bringing home six-packs. Velasco accused Van Stry of cheating on him, even though she never left the house, and threatened to kill her if he caught her. After he was arrested for breaking into her home during a separation, Van Stry filed for divorce in September 2020.
[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjidqre003j3f6kw3hucgp2@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} April 19 When Braunson learned his girlfriend was pregnant, he confided to Jones that he was terrified of being a deadbeat dad. He and his girlfriend were in a bad cycle; one would start using, triggering the other to relapse. His family hoped that the baby, Vinessa, would be the thing he needed to get his life together. But soon enough, Gross-Gill got a call. Braunson was bound for Rikers. “Just because you had a step backward,” she said, “does not mean that that’s the direction of your life.
Richard Blake, 45 Illustration: Chuy Hartman Richard Blake and Shersharna Stewart met in 2012 at a speakeasy in Flatbush. “He looked kind of like a nerd,” she says. “Not at all what you would expect.” Stewart learned that Blake made his living off the street’s shadow economy, like a lot of guys she had grown up with. But Blake was fun — he always had music on or was wisecracking — and he was considerate in small, surprising ways.
Blake and his son. Photo: Andy Zalkin, Courtesy of Shersharna Stewart On the morning of March 11, Blake hesitated at the foot of the bed where Stewart lay. He was due to meet his parole officer, and he told her that if she didn’t hear from him later, it would mean he’d been sent to Rikers. “Are we going to be good?” he asked. “Yeah,” she told him, “we’re always good.” Their eyes met. He asked again. This time his voice shook, and tears were coming down. She jumped up to hug him.
[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjido1r00373f6kx6d3jb0r@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} June 10 [data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjidmrf00313f6kbpvuibsq@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} June 30
[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjidlhp002v3f6ku8ko6vdt@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} August 10 He left New York in his early 20s, hoping to turn things around. In Indiana, he got a car and a silver pit bull with blue eyes. Next: Pennsylvania. One day in 2021, he called Carter with a catch in his voice, and she convinced him to come home. She cooked him everything he asked for, but he was too sick to keep anything down. Soon he was in the hospital, FaceTiming from his bed with Krystal, who had a baby boy — his “nephew,” he called him.
Segundo Guallpa, 58 Illustration: Chuy Hartman On September 20, 2020, their 36th anniversary, Segundo Guallpa convinced his wife to come to a friend’s house to play cards. Luz Gualman was tired, but she wanted to keep an eye on her husband’s drinking. She never saw the surprise party coming. “Next year, you’ll see,” Guallpa told her. “Everything will be different.”
On their 37th anniversary, Guallpa had been gone three weeks. Gualman thinks about the help she wishes her husband had received for his illnesses, rather than being sent to “that jail they call hell.” She thinks about other women who won’t call for help for fear of their husbands dying at Rikers. And she thinks about that night. “I was a victim of domestic violence,” she says. “My daughter tells me, ‘What if we hadn’t called the police? My father was aggressive.
Esias Johnson. Photo: Courtesy of Tracy Johnson In 2019, when he was 21, Johnson made the move. He stayed with a guy he had once dated, until he got kicked out and began to unravel. He made threats to Marymount College, where the former date had studied, and the campus was evacuated. Over the next few years, Johnson was arrested numerous times for threatening people — mostly men he had met online who’d rejected him, his parents say. He spent a year in Rikers.
[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjidhff002d3f6kbyx6pk64@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} September 19 He went to prison for the drug charge, was paroled, and moved to New Jersey, closer to a family he had met at a masjid who’d adopted him as their own. On Eid al-Fitr, he led prayers in Arabic and blended virgin piña coladas to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Then, in August 2021, he was the victim of a stabbing. While he was in the hospital, someone ran his name and saw he had a warrant for failing to report to his parole officer.
Lezandre was 14 when she had Stephan, the first baby of the group. They called him Pop, and he taught all her friends how to raise kids. He had dreams and grew up in a neighborhood where the place to exercise ambition was the streets. He hung around with older kids on the edge of gangs. When he was 16, Lezandre wrote him a note in purple pen: “You are truly hurting me. I try my best, but my best was not enough.
Khadu returned to jail a few days later. He played basketball in the rec yard on the Boat’s top level, and he told his family he was getting better. By his 24th birthday, on September 11, it seemed like Pop was back. On a video call, Lezandre was delighted to see he’d gotten a haircut. “You look like somebody loves you again,” she said.
With his girlfriend, Tammy Echevarria, Mercado would turn on the Temptations, crooning and spinning her around her plant-filled apartment. With his best friend, Rivera, Mercado would head to Gonzalez y Gonzalez in the Village. Even in his 60s, weathered by the streets and the drugs he sometimes used, he could match the salseros there move for move.
[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/subsection/instances/ckxjiddji001v3f6kezq45r7c@published"] .slug{font:700 14px/17px 'Egyptienne',Georgia,serif!importan;letter-spacing:3px!important;color:#ec2c00!important} December 10
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