By Colin Mixson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A 41-year-old man held on Rikers Island on a murder charge died Tuesday morning, marking the seventh person to lose their life in Department of Correction custody this year, officials said.
A correction officer found Clarence Woodward suffering a medical emergency at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Rikers Island around 5 a.m., according to a DOC spokesman.
Officers rendered aid while waiting for medics to arrive, but they could not save Woodward. He died at 5:40 a.m., officials said.
“Our department mourns the loss of Clarence Woodward and we share our deepest condolences with his family and loved ones,” DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards said in a statement. “This tragedy will be thoroughly investigated.”
Mayor Mamdani said he was “deeply saddened” to learn of Woodward’s passing.
“We do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island,” the Mayor posted on X Tuesday. “ The Department of Correction and its oversight partners will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death.”
An attorney for Woodward did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Woodward was being held without bail following his arrest on Aug. 8, 2024, for the Bronx double stabbing that left Jose Miranda, 45, dead and a 47-year-old man wounded inside a laundromat earlier that day.
In video obtained by the Daily News , the attacker carried shirts as he walked into the 24-hour laundromat on E. 170th St. near College Ave. at 2:40 a.m.
He slashed Miranda in the legs and upper body with a butcher knife and the other man in the back before fleeing south on College Ave. , police said.
Tuesday’s death follows the passing of Christopher Rodriguez, 36, who died while in DOC custody at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after suffering a medical episode on Aug. 18 .
Rodriguez went into medical distress at the Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit at Bellevue, where he died at 8:39 a.m. , a DOC spokesman said.
The Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit, which serves clinically vulnerable detainees with complex medical needs, opened at Bellevue in April and is part of the city’s plan to close Rikers Island and transition to a smaller, borough-based jail system.
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