A man being held at a newly opened detention facility in Manhattan\u2019s Bellevue Hospital died Tuesday morning, officials said.<\/p>\n
Christopher Rodriguez, 36, went into medical distress at the Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit at Bellevue, where he died at 8:39 a.m., a Department of Correction spokesman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply saddened by the passing of Mr. Rodriguez,\u201d said city Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards. \u201cOur entire department mourns his loss. We share our deepest condolences to Mr. Rodriguez\u2019s loved ones during this difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s medical examiner will determine Rodriguez\u2019s cause of death.<\/p>\n
The Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit<\/a>, which serves clinically vulnerable detainees with complex medical needs, opened at Bellevue in April<\/a> and is part of the city\u2019s plan to close Rikers Island and transition to a smaller, borough-based jail system.<\/p>\n Mayor Mamdani said he was \u201cheartbroken\u201d by news of Rodriguez\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cMy thoughts are with his loved ones as they grieve this tragic loss,\u201d the mayor said in a statement on X. \u201cAs is protocol for any death in City custody, the Department of Correction and its oversight partners will conduct a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding it.\u201d<\/p>\n A DOC spokesman would not say why Rodriguez was transferred to the facility, citing privacy laws.<\/p>\n DOC records show that Rodriguez was incarcerated on Nov. 29 following his arrest for an assault in Queens three days earlier. He has multiple assault cases in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, in addition to a Queens drug charge, records show.<\/p>\n Following Rodriguez\u2019s death, prison-reform advocates renewed their call for New York City to take steps to reduce its prison population.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tragic loss of another life in Department of Correction custody, even within an outpatient therapeutic setting at Bellevue Hospital, underscores why decarceration must be at the center of any meaningful response to the crisis on Rikers Island,\u201d Darren Mack, the co-director of Freedom Agenda, said. \u201cTrue public safety requires us to build systems that preserve life rather than repeatedly exposing people to preventable harm like broken windows policing does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man being held at a newly opened detention facility in Manhattan\u2019s Bellevue Hospital died Tuesday morning, officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,12,63,261,265],"class_list":["post-325393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}