A Rikers Island inmate behind bars for allegedly slashing a stranger with a boxcutter died in custody this week – marking the city’s first detainee death in 2025, officials and sources said.
Ramel Powell, 38 – who had been held since July 2023 in connection to a Manhattan attack in May of that year – died around 2:15 a.m. Wednesday inside the Otis Bantum Correctional Facility within the city’s most notorious lockup, according to the Department of Correction.
Powell’s cause of death was not immediately known.
“I, and the entire NYC Department of Correction, express our deepest sympathy to the loved ones of Mr. Powell,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddle said in a statement. “We are conducting a full investigation into this tragic event.”
The DOC notified the federal monitor, the city’s Board of Correction, the State Attorney General’s Office, the State Commission of Correction and the city’s Department of Investigation in connection to the death, according to a spokesperson.
Powell was awaiting trial for allegedly slashing another man with a boxcutter on Delancey Street near Essex Street on the Lower East Side on May 8, 2023, according to sources and a criminal complaint.
In that attack, Powell got into an argument with a “complete stranger” on the street, sources said.
He initially walked away from his target before pulling a boxcutter out of his backpack, circling back toward the victim and striking him on the left side of his face with the weapon, the sources said.
The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he required stitches for the deep gash, the sources said.
He was held on a second-degree charge, but the district attorney’s office had planned to indict him on the upgraded charge of first-degree assault.
In the meantime, prosecutors had requested that Powell be held on $100,000 bail in connection to the slashing – which he allegedly committed while on supervised release for another stranger attack, which left that victim needing stitches.
He was charged with third-degree assault, a class A misdemeanor, in connection to that attack, sources said.
Powell had three prior felony convictions, sources said.
His latest slashing case was ready for trial, but was being adjourned as he considered hiring a new defense attorney, sources said.
If convicted of the top charge, he could have faced at least three years behind bars.
Five people died on Rikers Island last year, after nine died in custody in 2023 and 19 died in 2022.
A 2019 law envisioned closing the beleaguered island complex by 2027 and building a smaller jail in each of the five boroughs.
In a scathing 65-page contempt order back in November, Manhattan federal judge Laura Taylor Swain blasted the city for rising deaths of inmates, skyrocketing “uses of force” by correction officers, and a slew of other failures.
Swain said she was “inclined” to order a federal takeover of the troubled jail complex.
