After the overdose death of a Bronx man in a Rikers Island jail in 2022, correction staff doctored records to make it seem falsely they had responded to his medical crisis sooner and had given an anti-overdose drug to the dying man, a new filing in his family’s lawsuit alleges.
Gilberto Garcia, 27, died of acute fentanyl intoxication on Oct. 31, 2022 in a cell at the Anna M. Kross Center after reaching his hands through the bars in an effort to alert correction staff as he went into medical distress.
His brother Gilson Garcia was in the next cell. Gilson also tried to alert correction staff, but when officers didn’t act, he tried unsuccessfully to revive him with the anti-overdose drug Narcan he grabbed from an officer and employ CPR which he was not trained to perform.
“When I was calling for help, this CO was taking her time, moving slowly. I ran out of my brother’s cell. I ran to her and grabbed her Narcan,” Gilson Garcia wrote in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit. ” I gave my brother Narcan. I had never administered Narcan before. I also did CPR on him. I was trying to do CPR as best as I could, but I had never been trained to do it.”
But records show and the complaint alleges that DOC officials omitted his intervention from their reports entirely, allegedly to obscure their own failures. The allegations are contained in an amended complaint filed by Gilson Garcia, 26, and a second relative, Venus Mendez, early Sunday n Supreme Court in the Bronx in their lawsuit against the city. The DOC did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The filing details a step-by-step account of breakdowns that allegedly took place before and after Gilberto Garcia’s death.
“The most disturbing part of this case to me is the way DOC wrote Gilson out of this entire tragedy,” said the family’s lawyer, MK Kaishian. “They didn’t report he called for help twice, that he administered Narcan, that he initiated CPR and it was all to hide their own culpability in their failure to respond.”
In the hours leading up to Garcia’s fatal overdose, correction officers didn’t check on cells, improperly left their posts to go on repeated breaks, didn’t document their time away from their posts, and allowed detainees to cover their cells with sheets, a practice barred under DOC policy for security reason, the amended complaint alleges.
Much of this sequence was revealed by comparing security video with the reports compiled by correction staff on Garcia’s death.
“Their story did not match Gilson’s story and I am sure Gilson wouldn’t lie to his family,” said Yarielis Silverio, Gilson Garcia’s partner. “I feel like they should definitely be held accountable it’s outrageous to play with people’s lives and people’s families like this.”
A captain and three officers failed to alert medical staff of the emergency until 12:23 p.m., five minutes after Gilson Garcia and other detainees told them his brother was in serious trouble, the complaint alleges.
But in at least one written report, a DOC staffer claimed falsely that officers alerted CHS at 12:10 p.m., a full 13 minutes before they actually notified CHS, the amended complaint claims.
Even though it was Gilson Garcia who administered the Narcan, correction officers created records which claimed that credit for themselves, the complaint alleges, based on documents obtained from the DOC and investigating agencies.
After his brother’s death, the family visited Rikers to try to get answers and DOC tried to ban them for 45 days from the jails until Kaishian got the ban lifted, Silverio and Kaishian said.
Meanwhile, DOC kept Gilson Garcia in the same housing unit where his brother died for an agonizing month, causing emotional scars that will take a long time to heal, the complaint alleges.
“I did not want to be in that unit, and I asked to be moved many times. I was not comfortable passing his cell because I kept expecting him to be there,” he wrote in his affidavit.
The amended complaint parallels findings in a Board of Correction report on deaths in the jails in 2022.
Notably, a day or two after Garcia’s death, board investigators found people smoking apparent drugs in front of correction officers in the very same unit – as if nothing had happened.
Garcia died during a period in which non-fatal overdoses were spiking in the jails. Overdoses were also the leading cause of death in the jails in 2022 and 2023, the complaint alleges.
Garcia tested positive for benzodiazepines or “downers” when he was admitted to Rikers on Nov. 2, 2019. He was accused of drug possession three times in the Kross Center after that.
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The BOC investigation and the amended complaint indicate Garcia missed 16 medical appointments – largely to treat his mental state -but there was a discrepancy between DOC and CHS records about the reasons for those missed visits.
CHS documented that 13 appointments were missed because correction staff did not bring Garcia to the visit, but DOC documented just one missed visit, the BOC report shows.
A lawsuit recently filed by public defenders groups alleges correction staff falsify records showing the reason for missed medical visits on a broader scale than previously known.
The Correction Department declined to comment on that allegation.
Gilberto Garcia is buried in a New Jersey cemetery and the family visits regularly. But Gilson Garcia, who tried to save his brother’s life, is barred from visiting, Kaishian said. He serving a 10-year prison term for robbery in an upstate prison.
“Gilberto had a lot of friends, and we go once a month, every 31st,” said Silverio, 27, a case manager in a city shelter. “We visit him as much as we can.”