A prisoner who died on Saturday at an upstate medium security jail is being looked into by New York State Police. On Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the news was “deeply troubling.”
State police said Monday that Messiah Nantwi, 22, died at a hospital. He was a prisoner at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy. The New York Times reported that nine prisoners, seven of whom agreed to give their names, said in interviews that the inmate had been severely beaten by corrections officers at Mid-State. The officials have not said what led to or caused the death.
On Monday, the state said in a release that eleven employees had been put on administrative leave while the probe went on.
The Monday press statement said, “The Commissioner put 11 staff members involved in the incident on administrative leave until the investigations are over.” There were no specifics about what happened in the facility in the statement.
Nearly three months before Nantwi’s death, 43-year-old Black state prisoner Robert Brooks died after what police said was a beating by guards at a different jail in Marcy, which is less than a mile from Mid-State.
News that Nantwi had died was brought up to the governor on Monday, who said that the case was “very much under investigation.”
Hochul told reporters in New York City on Monday morning that the situation was “deeply troubling.” “We don’t know what caused the death, but it is my top priority to find out what happened.”
At a news conference on Monday night, Daniel Martuscello III, Commissioner of the State Department of Corrections, shared the governor’s worry and called Nantwi’s death a “tragedy.”
“As soon as we learned of the person’s death, we asked the Attorney General’s office and the state police to do their own investigation and put staff members who were involved in the incident on administrative leave,” he said. “Because of that ongoing investigation, we have nothing else to say at this time.”
A news release from the agency on Monday said that state police were told about Nantwi’s death on Saturday.
State police said that Nantwi was declared dead at Wynn Hospital in Utica, New York. What happened with his death is still being looked into by the New York State Police, with help from the office of special investigations in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
In a statement that CNN affiliate WKTV got, the state corrections department stated that the person died on Saturday.
“A person who was in jail was taken to an outside hospital earlier today (Saturday) and was pronounced dead a short time later,” the prisons department said in a statement.
The statement says that the state attorney general’s office, the New York State Police, and the New York state prisons department all look into “any death that appears to be from other than natural causes or a known medical condition.”
A spokesman for the office of Attorney General Letitia James said, “The Office of Special Investigation is doing a preliminary assessment of the matter.”
