A mentally ill man who spent the past year in a Rikers Island jail is in a medically induced coma with life-threatening pneumonia and a dangerous infection that his family says was not properly treated by jail officials.
Ronald Jordon, 57, is at Elmhurst Hospital in intensive care on a ventilator after he was taken there on June 4 from the North Infirmary Command.
At Elmhurst, he was diagnosed with pneumonia, cellulitis, and kidney failure. He appears to have contracted MRSA, a type of bacteria that creates potentially deadly staph infections, in the jails, two of his relatives told the Us.Mistertruth.
Jordon is currently on a regimen of antibiotics to save his life.
During the year he had been in Rikers, Jordon’s weight ballooned from 260 pounds to more than 400 because he didn’t get physical therapy, his family said.
“His legs look like elephant legs,” said his sister Felicia Jordan-Knight, 65. “He was not in this condition when he went in there. The doctors said he is the most sick patient in the whole hospital.”
Another sister, Beatrice Jordon, said her brother “didn’t get either the medical or the psychiatric care he needed or the physical therapy. They took him to the hospital when he was almost on his death bed. Why wasn’t it sooner? If he was getting proper medical attention, we would not be here today.”
DOC officials did not reply to a request for comment. A spokeswoman with Correction Health Services declined comment.
The relatives said they were not notified about Jordon’s condition for 48 hours until Felicia was reached at home.
DOC initially tried to prevent them from seeing Ronald, the family said, but Beatrice pushed back on them and they relented.
“We had to wait to get authorization to come to see him,” Beatrice said. “I can’t wait days to go see my brother-in-law. I just lost it. I said we are coming. I said you better fix it right now.”
DOC has so far offered little explanation to the family, the family said.
Jordon had long struggled with mental illness, with medications seeming to balance him out when he took them. He has also had health problems, including a prior bout with cellulitis that put him in Bellevue Hospital.
“He suffers from a mental disability,” Felicia said. “When he’s not on his medication he’s a wreck. When he’s on his medication, he’s the most humble sweet person in the world.”
It often fell to Beatrice and her late husband to look out for Ronald. In better times, he was functional and beloved by his relatives.
“My husband and I was his rock. We carried him on and off for over three decades,” she said. “We told him he has to advocate for himself. I directed him to speak to social workers/social services in hopes he would get help.”
“I’m alright, Bea,” Jordon would often say when asked.
“I talked to him a month ago, and he seemed fine,” said Felicia.
Jordon was arrested on assault, robbery and harassment charges in Brooklyn where he was living and sent to Rikers on July 31, 2022. He also had cases in other boroughs, officials said.
In the Brooklyn case, he was accused of stealing items from a Rite Aid and stuffing them in his shirt, records show. When three store employees confronted him, Jordon showered them with pepper spray.
He was sentenced to year in jail back in September with a release date of July 4, records show. He has spent his entire stint in North Infirmary Command.
“My question is how did he get to this level of severity,” Beatrice Jordon said.
“He is a human being no matter what he did in his life. He’s still someone’s brother, someone’s uncle, and he didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”