Family seeks answers in son’s death on Rikers — Queens Daily Eagle

By Jacob Kaye

The family of a Bayside man who died on Rikers Island last year is suing the city’s Department of Corrections, alleging it improperly withheld information about the man’s death.

The family of Donny Ubiera, who died in the city’s notorious jail complex in August 2023, said in the lawsuit filed in mid-June – which was not previously reported – that the DOC unlawfully denied their requests for records related to Ubiera’s death, the 27th seen at Rikers Island since early 2022.

The Ubieras claim that the city agency failed to follow proper procedures under the Freedom of Information Act when it denied the family’s request for a number of documents and videos that could shed light on the moments leading up to Ubiera’s death.

“Donny died almost a year ago,” said Sonya Levitova, an attorney with the firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, who is representing the Ubiera family. “It is quite outrageous to me that Donny’s family is mourning his death almost a year later with little to no information about the circumstances of his death.”

Ubiera, the eighth person to die in DOC custody in the past year, was found unconscious in his cell around 5 a.m. on August 22, 2023, after allegedly taking an overdose of methadone that he purchased from another inmate held in his living area.

But details about the hours before his death remain unclear.

According to a City & State report, other inmates in cells near Ubiera heard the Bayside man screaming for help around 1:30 a.m., claiming he couldn’t breathe. However, his pleas and knocks on his cell door were not responded to, the newspaper reported. He was not found by officers until three and a half hours later.

The city’s Board of Correction, the DOC’s oversight body, launched an investigation into Ubiera’s death and found no evidence that Ubiera had called for help prior to his death – although they could not rule it out, either.

The civilian oversight board reviewed body-worn camera footage of an officer walking through the residential area around 1:28 a.m. and found that the officer “showed no indication that he had heard anyone in distress.”

However, the prison’s surveillance footage does not contain any audio data, the BOC said.

In their FOIL request, the Ubiera family asked the city to release documents that could shed light not only on whether Ubiera called for help, but also on other factors that may have contributed to the 32-year-old’s death.

The FOIL request asked the city to release city Department of Investigation records related to Ubiera, including a video chronicle of the incident. The Department of Investigation was also asked to release a preliminary health report on Ubiera, all available incident reports, the disciplinary history of personnel on duty in the days leading up to the death, reports on the facility where Ubiera was housed, emails from the Department of Investigation regarding Ubiera’s death to the chief medical examiner, Department of Investigation and the Queens District Attorney’s Office, and more.

Less than a month after the FOIL was filed, the DOC denied the request, stating that it could not release the records because the matter was still under investigation. The Ubieras appealed the denial about a week later.

According to Levitova, the DOC was required to respond to the appeal within ten days and either release the documents or provide an explanation as to why the application was denied.

The agency allegedly failed to do either, which led to the lawsuit last month.

“Our job here is to find out what happened,” Levitova said. “There’s a reason we requested documents that the Department of Correction has that relate to Donny, to his time at Rikers. His family wants to know what happened, and we don’t know yet.”

The Department of Correction declined to comment on the lawsuit and referred the Eagle to the city’s legal department, which did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Ubiera was first booked into Rikers on March 29, 2023, for murder after allegedly committing three separate random violent attacks across Queens within a week, including one that resulted in the death of a man.

After arriving at the prison, he was placed in a facility for inmates with acute mental health problems. Ubiera was confused, disorganized and unable to cooperate with his legal team, the BOC report on his death said. He was eventually declared unfit to stand trial.

Ubiera had a long history of mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He also suffered from substance abuse and had participated in several outpatient drug programs prior to his incarceration at Rikers.

According to the BOC, Ubiera repeatedly refused to take medication to treat his mental health problems and was eventually placed in a psychiatric observation unit – the same unit where he later died.

Last week, the Eagle was also the first newspaper to report on a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Joshua Valles, who died in DOC custody about three months before Ubiera’s death.