A police investigation is underway after an inmate died Saturday at a New York State prison where 11 staff have already been placed on administrative leave, officials said.
Messiah Nantwi, 22, died at Wynn Hospital in Utica, the New York Department of Corrections said in a statement Monday night. No details related to the circumstances of his death were released.
Nantwi, was being held at the Mid-State Correctional Facility to the north of Utica, where he was awaiting trial for allegedly shooting and killing two people in two separate incidents within 30 hours in in 2023.
He was already serving a five-year sentence for the second-degree possession of a criminal weapon related to a 2021 shooting.
Nantwi’s death comes two weeks after six prison officers were charged over the death of Robert Brooks, who was beaten by guards in December at the Marcy Correctional Facility — just a few hundred yards away — in an attack Gov. Kathy Hochul described as “brutal” and “sickening.”
“Upon hearing of the death of a 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi incarcerated individual at Mid-State Correction Facility on Saturday, March 1st, The Office of NY Attorney General and the New York State Police were notified,” the Department of Corrections said in a statement Monday.
The statement added that it is up to the county medical examiner to determine the cause of Nantwi’s death and whether to make the result of its investigation public.
New York State police said in a statement that it was investigating “the circumstance surrounding his death” with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).
Stan German, executive director of the New York County Defender Services, said that while Nantwi was accused of serious crimes, he had a violent upbringing and faced “significant mental health challenges.”
“True, he was incarcerated, but he was still entitled like all of us, to basic human dignity and safety,” German said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Instead, he suffered a violent senseless death at the hands of state corrections officers operating within a toxic culture that our society mainly ignores.”
New York Civil Liberties Union Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement that this was not an isolated incident.
“We are extremely disturbed by the reported killing of another incarcerated person in Marcy at the hands of correction officers and call for full transparency and justice,” she said.
“No one should die in custody at the hands of correction officers, who are charged with the safety and security of individuals in DOCCS’s facilities.”
Nantwi’s death comes as ongoing strike action continues to affect operations at New York prisons, despite a deal struck between Gov. Hochul and the prisons trade union.
The corrections department declined to comment to questions about the case from the Associated Press.
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