Another person has died on Rikers Island, the ninth person this year in Department of Correction custody, not counting a man who died shortly after he was released in March.<\/p>\n
Ardit Billa was found \u201cunresponsive in his cell\u201d by officers at the George R. Vierno Center at 12:25 a.m. Saturday morning, according to city officials. The city Department of Correction said officers responded with emergency medical aid but Billa, 29, was pronounced dead shortly before 1:00 a.m.<\/p>\n
In a statement, DOC commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said the department is committed to a \u201cfull review of the circumstances surrounding this incident \u2026 Any loss of life in our custody is a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall this year, ten individuals have died in custody or shortly after<\/a> being released \u2014 double the number<\/a> of in-custody deaths for all of last year.<\/p>\n According to court records, Billa was arrested in January and charged with multiple counts of assault and criminal possession of a weapon as well as a separate case involving burglary, trespass, and criminal possession of stolen property. He was set to appear in court in three weeks.<\/p>\n The death adds to ongoing concerns about inmate safety at the notoriously violent jail complex that is currently teetering on the brink of a federal takeover.<\/p>\n While the DOC listed Billa as the ninth death, advocates and other city officials include a 10th person, Ariel Quidone, in the count. Quidone had a medical emergency on Rikers and was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital in March. DOC released him while the medical emergency was underway and he died shortly after, city officials said<\/p>\n In July, Edwin Quispe, 33, died at<\/a> Rikers after being found on the floor of a bathroom. Earlier in the summer, two detainees died in separate incidents on the same day<\/a> in custody.<\/p>\n This summer, the City Council passed a bill<\/a> requiring the DOC to notify families of the deceased, as well as the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and oversight agencies, in a timely manner following deaths in jails. The bill,<\/a> which Mayor Eric Adams declined to sign, automatically went into law 10 days ago, according to Council records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another person has died on Rikers Island, the ninth person this year in Department of Correction custody, not…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":170203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-170202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115080454714224577","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}