NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A 31-year-old Rikers Island inmate died early Wednesday, becoming the fifth inmate to die this year, the Department of Correction confirmed.
Mary Yehudah died at Elmhurst Hospital at 5:11 a.m. Wednesday. Her cause of death is under investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Sources told the New York Daily News that her death was the result of a drug overdose.
Yehudah went into medical distress while at the Rose M. Singer Center. A correction officer came to help her and contacted medical personnel who gave her Narcan and revived her to the point where she was able to breathe on her own, sources told the outlet.
She died at Elmhurst Hospital on Wednesday at 5:11 a.m. Her cause of death is under investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The state Attorney General's Office and the NYC Department of Investigation will also probe her death.
Yehudah entered custody on Feb. 12 on a first-degree robbery charge.
"Ms. Yehuda's passing fills us with sadness, every life here is precious," said Commissioner Louis A. Molina in a statement Wednesday. "Our thoughts are with her family and loved ones."
The latest death came less than a day after federal monitor Steve J. Martin agreed to improvements offered by Mayor Eric Adams and Molina to fix conditions at the notorious jail complex.
"This action plan is a well-informed effort to identify specific immediate steps the city and Department of Correction must take to reduce the risk of harm in the city’s jails right now and to lay the groundwork that begins to disentangle the decades of dysfunction and mismanagement that characterizes this agency," Martin said in a letter addressed to U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
Swain could order a federal takeover if the reform plan is not implemented or successful.
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