NYC prisoner wracked with asthma died after being turned away from Rikers Island clinic, lawsuit says

When correction staff failed to aid an asthmatic older man struggling for life in a Rikers Island jail, his fellow detainees were moved to act themselves.

Two detainees picked up Herminio Villanueva, 61, and carried him to the door of the medical clinic at Rikers’ Robert N. Davoren Center, says a lawsuit filed by Villanueva’s sister. The detainees’ lifesaving effort is documented in photographs taken by jailhouse surveillance cameras.

But the clinic turned them away.

The detainees carried Villanueva back to his Davoren Center housing unit — where 16 more minutes passed before medical help finally arrived.

By then, Villanueva, who suffered acute bronchial asthma, was past saving. He died on June 21, 2020, soon after he was returned from the clinic’s door to his housing unit, and about 3½ months after he was jailed for failing to keep parole officials up-to-date about his address.

“It is terrible what they did to him,” his wife, Eva Villanueva, told the Daily News. Correction officers “didn’t treat him as well as you would a dog,” she said. “They let him die.

“It doesn’t matter what he was. I miss him a lot. He used to make me laugh. He used to play a lot with my granddaughter. Everybody misses him.”

Correction Department officials knew Villanueva was ailing when he arrived at Rikers after his arrest on March 2, 2020, the lawsuit says. They identified him as needing medical housing, court papers state.

But officials instead kept Villanueva in the general population, where he suffered several severe asthma attacks.

The array of missed chances to save Villanueva’s life are detailed in the suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court last week by Villanueva’s sister, who is also named Eva Villanueva.

A spokesman for the city Law Department declined comment, saying the city will respond during litigation.

When Villanueva — who had been on parole since 1989 after serving time for a sex offense conviction a decade earlier — arrived at Rikers, he was assigned to a dorm with roughly 50 other detainees.

Two weeks after he arrived — around when the first COVID case appeared in the jails — the city Board of Correction and health officials pressed the Correction Department to release medically vulnerable detainees. Villianueva was not among those released.

Instead, he got COVID on April 3, 2020, and was sent to a hospital off the island — his family’s lawsuit does not say which, or how long he stayed there.

He was taken to Bellevue Hospital on May 9 for to be treated for a new bout of asthma and other conditions. He stayed there four days before being returned to general population at Rikers — even though Correction Department medical staff noted his serious medical issues, the suit says.

Villanueva suffered another serious asthma attack on May 24, and went back to the hospital June 3 for shortness of breath, the lawsuit says. He returned to Rikers on June 4, and again was placed in general population.

“Villanueva was housed in a general unit, without onsite medical staff that could have saved his life,” the lawsuit alleges. “Villanueva’s suffering and ultimate death were preventable and needless.”

On June 19, a detainee told an officer Villanueva was having trouble breathing. The next day, June 20, he was in serious medical distress, the lawsuit says.

He was taken to the clinic, but sent back an hour later.

On the morning of June 21, 2020, Villanueva again had a severe asthma attack. Other detainees went to his bed to check on him, photos filed with the lawsuit show.

A correction officer saw he was having trouble, but didn’t call for medical staff. A detainee told them, “He shouldn’t be here,” the lawsuit said.

A second officer did call for medical, the lawsuit says. Help did not arrive after 10 minutes — leading to the incident captured by surveillance cameras at 7:38 a.m. in which two detainees picked up Villanueva and carried him to the clinic door. Pictures from the surveillance cameras are included in his sister’s lawsuit.

At the clinic, an officer turned them away and told them to carry Villanueva back to the housing unit, the lawsuit says. There, detainees put him on a bed and tried to comfort him.

Two officers present did not try CPR or make other efforts to revive Villanueva, the lawsuit says. Sixteen minutes later, medical staff finally arrived. ViIlanueva was pronounced dead at 8:10 a.m.

The city medical examiner determined he died of acute bronchial asthma.

“Mr. Villanueva — a senior citizen with severe medical conditions — was ignored and passed over right up to the final seconds of his life as he struggled to breathe,” said lawyer Katherine Rosenfeld, whose firm, Emery Celli, is representing his sister in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says that a preliminary investigation by the city Board of Correction found “several issues for investigation” in Villanueva’s case — including the Correction Department’s decisions about where he was housed, as well as the way it responded to his medical needs.

In the two years since Villanueva’s death, the state passed the “Less Is More” law, which likely would have stopped him from being jailed for a minor parole violation in the first place.

Villanueva was among 11 people who died in the jails in 2020. A second was Raymond Rivera, whose death is the subject of a second lawsuit filed last week.

Like Villanueva, Rivera suffered from serious medical ailments but wound up in jail for a minor parole violation — leaving a drug treatment facility without reporting it to his parole officer — after his 2019 arrest for stealing shampoo from a Family Dollar store.

Rivera, 55, had been in Rikers for months. In February 2020, a judge ordered him released with time served.

“Mr. Rivera had accepted responsibility by pleading guilty here; he has been lodged over 6 months already,” parole Judge Anthony Zrake wrote. “Mr. Rivera’s program needs can be appropriately addressed in the community with parole supervision.”

But according to the lawsuit, Correction Department fumbled the release, holding him in jail despite the judge’s order.

Rivera spent five more weeks in jail before he died in Bellevue Hospital, according to the lawsuit filed by his longtime partner, Nancy Poux.

Rivera complained repeatedly to Correction Department staff that he was wrongfully jailed and called 311 several times, but he was ignored. He also told medical staff he was feeling ill.

On March 21, he had to be moved to a DOC infirmary. He showed weakness and dehydration. He was then transferred to Bellevue where he was diagnosed with throat cancer and COVID. Poux tried to visit him but she was denied.

On April 3, 2020, Rivera — now in grave medical condition from the cancer — was released and moved to a regular hospital room three floors below where he died a day later.

“Raymond Rivera and Herminio Villanueva were both jailed on Rikers Island in 2020 for minor, nonviolent parole violations,” said Rosenfeld, who is also representing Rivera’s family.

“They both died cruel and lonely deaths that year, 78 days apart, because Rikers Island is a failed, lawless jail, unable to provide the most basic care and custody to the people who are imprisoned there.”