The first inmate to die on Rikers Island this year suffered from a fatal fentanyl and heroin overdose, officials ruled.
Tarz Youngblood, 38, was unconscious when he was carried out of someone else’s cell around 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 27 by four other inmates, according to internal records and the Board of Corrections.
The detainees brought Youngblood downstairs, placed him on a table and rendered aid as a correction officer called in a medical emergency and started performing chest compressions, a report from the BOC states.
Medical staff from the on-site clinic arrived eight minutes later and transported Youngblood to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:44 a.m.
It’s not immediately clear if Youngblood was issued Narcan, which reverses opioid overdoses, or if the detainees informed Department of Correction staff that Youngblood had been taking drugs.
The DOC declined to comment, saying only that Youngblood’s death is still under investigation.
Youngblood’s exact cause of death is “acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl and heroin” and was ruled an accident, said the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
At the time of his overdose, Youngblood’s housing unit was properly staffed but the correction officer on-duty had not done a tour of the area for over an hour before the incident, even though tours are required every 30 minutes, the BOC stated.
The Department of Corrections is currently investigating Tarz Youngblood’s death from an alleged drug overdose on Rikers earlier this year. EPA/JUSTIN LANEThe cell where Youngblood overdosed — which was assigned to a Crips member detainee — had also not been checked for at least three hours before he died and had a window that was obstructed with “some sort of white or grey covering,” the BOC found after a probe of the death.
Youngblood, a father of three, was homeless, Taylor Garzone, a forensic social worker with New York County Defender Services, said in a statement in February.
“In our prior representation of him, we found him to be a kind and well-intentioned man. Yet while on Rikers, he was unable to receive necessary medical treatment in a timely manner due to logistical ineptness, resulting in extreme pain and suffering,” Garzone said, calling his death a “tragedy.”
Forensic social worker Taylor Garzone blasted the DOC for failing to deliver medical care to Youngblood. G.N. Miller“Mr. Youngblood’s death is a devastating reminder that Rikers Island is a humanitarian disaster. The conditions there are unconscionable. The only path forward to end the death and misery on Rikers is federal receivership.”
On Monday, the BOC issued a blistering report that found the jail’s staffing crisis, and breakdowns in getting inmates critical medical care, contributed to the lockup’s first three deaths this year.
On Saturday, 25-year-old Dashawn Carter was found hanging in his cell by a sheet attached to a window, marking the fourth death in-custody so far this year.
Carter, who suffered from mental health issues, was transferred from a psychiatric hospital directly to a general population housing unit two days before he died, the BOC said.
