A Rikers Island detainee was reported dead Wednesday after he apparently jumped from a cellblock area on an upper floor of unit for mentally ill people, the Us.Mistertruth has learned from multiple sources.
Rubu Zhao, 52, suffered a skull fracture in the fall Sunday in the PACE mental health unit at the George R. Vierno Center, multiple sources told The News. Sources said before his death he was treated at Elmhurst Hospital.
Zhao, a native of China, was arrested in December on charges of murder and illegal weapons possession in Brooklyn and had a May 31 court date. He was accused of killing his girlfriend in their Sunset Park home.
Sources said Zhao left a suicide note and then jumped from the upper tier in housing area 8B.
The sources said his suicide attempt may have been related to high security conditions in the unit, where people are shackled when they are outside of their cells, even though experts caution against the use of extreme restrictions for mentally ill people.
The Correction Department did not have immediate comment.
The PACE program — the acronym stands for Program to Accelerate Clinical Effectiveness — was created in 2015 and meant to increase the quality of mental health care for mentally ill people in the jails via Correctional Health Services.
The program is supposed to provide increased supervision for people held in those units.
In addition to PACE, DOC and CHS also operate CAPS — Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation — for detainees with mental illness who have broken the rules.
Correction officers assigned in those units are supposed to get eight hours of “Mental Health First Aid” training to spot signs of distress in detainees.