Roberto Grant was found dead at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on May 19, 2015, where he was awaiting sentencing after pleading to robbery conspiracy.
The treatment of prisoners at New York City’s infamous Rikers Island where 15 inmates died in custody last year alone has been discussed and debated at great lengths. The prison is slated to be closed by 2026, at which time its inmates will be sent to other facilities throughout the city.
arrow The mother of Roberto Grant, Crecita Williams, stands by his tombstone with Grant s nephew Jeremiah. Scott Heins / Gothamist
It was May 2015, and Roberto Grant had pleaded guilty to taking part in a series of luxury watch store heists. He was awaiting sentencing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail in lower Manhattan, when he died a violent death. An autopsy released a year and a half later listed his cause of death as “undetermined.”
Grant’s family says MCC administrators and their superiors at the federal Bureau of Prisons misled them about what really happened the night he died. And they are demanding answers.