Two months before his 2022 suicide in a Rikers Island jail, Erick Tavira told a doctor that killing himself would give him “real liberty,” records show. One month before his death, Tavira poured scalding water on his body, “just to feel something.”
Neither incident nor a litany of other red flags led jail officials to place him on suicide watch, and on Oct. 22, 2022, Tavira, age 28, hanged himself in his cell at the George R. Vierno Center.
Now, documents and videos obtained by the Daily News through his family’s litigation against the city reveal a steady drumbeat of warnings and missed chances by DOC and Correctional Health Services to avert the tragedy.
As lawyers for the city and detainees gather Wednesday before a federal judge in a wood-paneled courtroom at 500 Pearl St. to argue over whether to hold the city in contempt for its management of the jails, Tavira’s death stands as an example of the system’s maladies.
“There were so many signs here. This is someone who came in with preexisting well-documented issues that he also exhibited in the jails,” said the family’s lawyer MK Kaishian. “DOC and CHS were aware of the risk factors and failed.”
Tavira’s sister Amarilis Torres said the family expected he would get help. “He had been suicidal for so many years. We thought he was supposed to receive medication, that they would do their job,” said Torres, who named her infant son after her brother.
“But they treated him like he was nothing. Like he was just another body there, literally.”
Patrick Rocchio, a DOC spokesman, declined to comment on pending litigation, but said the department has taken a range of steps to address deaths in the jails including installing anti-ligature covers in housing units, anti-overdose medication, and better suicide prevention training.
CHS did not respond to a request for comment.
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The sequence that ended with Tavira’s death began in June 2021 when in the midst of a psychiatric episode he went for that help to Metropolitan Hospital on the Upper East Side.
There, video shows, he removed his shirt while sitting in a chair in a waiting room. City hospital police appeared, and one of them took him down. He was then dragged from the room by a group of officers. A hospital officer claimed he twisted his ankle, and Tavira was charged with assault and sent to Rikers. None of the officers involved appeared to have faced any disciplinary action.
From the very beginning of his incarceration, the records show, DOC and CHS were well aware of his psychiatric history. “While incarcerated he has been placed on suicide watch in the past,” said a statement repeated in medical records throughout 2021 and 2022. “He has a history of suicide attempt by overdose in 2018.”
Even though he was in general population for much of his incarceration, he had more than 10 inpatient prior psychiatric hospitalizations, 15 psychiatric ER visits and a history of suicide attempts, the records show.
But Tavira missed at least 34 medical appointments in 2021 and 2022 and was not given his medication at least 129 times over his 490-day incarceration, including 57 doses in his final 130 days, the records show. There was often no explanation – bare-bones notations of “DOC-Not produced” and “CHS-Canceled” pepper the medical records.
“When he wasn’t medicated, or taking it inconsistently, it can cause dips in mood or suicidal thoughts,” Kaishian said.
He was placed on suicide watch just for one day in June 2021, the records show. A suicide prevention aide – a detainee trained to monitor at-risk inmates mandated under DOC policy – was never placed in his unit.
“Suicide Watch Not Required,” reads an Aug. 3, 2022, notation in a CHS report.
Roughy two weeks later, on Aug. 19, 2022, the medical notes disclose Tavira talked about taking his life.
“He said he wants to go to Switzerland or Denmark to kill himself. … Killing himself would give ‘real liberty,’ the notes state.
But the medical staffer marked “no” on the report on whether Tavira was a candidate for suicide watch.
On Aug. 23, Tavira was beaten by another detainee. DOC opted to transfer him to a higher security jail, the George R. Vierno Center.
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On Sept. 20, 2022, video shows, he refused to leave the chair he was on, and officers hit him with pepper spray.
“You’re passively resisting. You can’t stay here,” an officer states.
“I don’t want to go to GRVC,” Tavira says. His fear, the lawsuit alleges, was related to four other detainee deaths there.
“Stop resisting,” the officer says adding after dousing him, “I told you I was going to spray you.”
None of the officers involved appeared to have faced any disciplinary action, In February, the Board of Correction issued a report questioning the use of pepper spray on someone who is passively resisting.
“Writing this letter on a commissary bin,” Tavira wrote. “Kindness is considered weakness [here]. Violence is normality. Provocative beings try to bring me down as low as one can be.”
“The smell of drugs being smoked is seeping into my cell as I write this. Trying not to notice it.”
Two days after his transfer, saying he “just wanted to feel something,” Tavira poured scalding water on himself, the records show. CHS staffers failed to recommend him for suicide watch or higher supervision.
Tavira left no suicide note, but on Oct. 21, 2022, one day prior, he wrote a note to his jailers asking to be paid for his job cleaning shower stalls.
“I have been keeping them clean. I would like to be paid for my hard work,” he wrote. “Today is the last day that I will clean the showers because I have not been feeling well.”
An aerial view of Rikers Island in New York City. (Todd Maisel/New York Daily News)
The next day, Tavira tore white clothing into strips and carefully knotted them together into a 92.5-inch-long noose. He curled the noose through the grating of an air vent about 8 feet from the concrete floor, stood on something and slipped his neck inside.
The locations of vents and ceiling pipes in elevated positions in cells have been highlighted in the past as a trouble spots for suicides.
Tavira was last seen alive at 12:57 a.m. by an officer, but no staff checked on him after that, the records show.
He may have experienced conscious pain for 45 minutes while he was hanging, the lawsuit alleges. After he was discovered, the noose was placed into the body bag with him.
DOC sent a priest and two officers to notify the family but their brusque manner and lack of information only angered them, Torres said.
Tavira left no suicide note, but the writings found in his cell suggest a man beseeching God for peace and filled with regret at where life has taken him.
Among his things in his room were two sets of rosary beads, one in white and one in black, and a letter to his mother. “I admit the sacrifices and pain she has dealt with because of me. Have mercy on her because she loves me too much,” he wrote.
On a little scrap of paper he wrote, “Lord help me with my addiction, repairing my family bond, keep me protected.”
“I currently sit in a cell in Rikers. It’s going to take more than the man I am to get out of this hell,” he wrote. “My life can’t and won’t be wasted. I don’t trust no one and I will get out one way or another.”
Tavira is now buried in a New Jersey cemetery next to his grandfather.
