Mayor Mourns Accused Killer, Victim Omitted

Zohran Mamdani speaking at an outdoor press conference — Photo: Shutterstock

Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered public condolences to the family of a man who died in city custody, but never mentioned the person that man was accused of killing.

Quick Take

Mamdani posted condolences after Luis Alberto Lopez Castillo died in city custody following a Queens court appearance.
Castillo faced murder, manslaughter and robbery charges tied to the 2025 killing of Ronell Marte, an autistic 26-year-old, in the Bronx.
Critics say the mayor’s statement ignored the victim entirely while extending sympathy to the accused man’s family.
This marks at least the second time Mamdani has issued similar condolences for an inmate accused of murder, drawing the same complaint.

What Mamdani Actually Said About The In-Custody Death

Mamdani posted on social media that a person in city custody died the evening before, following a court appearance in Queens. He said Department of Correction staff performed CPR before paramedics arrived, but the man was pronounced dead at a hospital. Mamdani wrote he wanted to extend his condolences to the man’s family.

The mayor added that the Department of Correction and its oversight partners would investigate the death, calling that step “standard practice”. Nowhere in the post did Mamdani name or reference Ronell Marte, the 26-year-old man Castillo was accused of robbing and killing in the Bronx in 2025.

Who The Accused Man Was And Why It Matters

Castillo faced charges of murder, manslaughter, robbery, and weapons offenses connected to Marte’s death, according to reporting on the case. Marte had special needs, and outlets covering the backlash noted that Mamdani’s statement made no reference to him or his family at all. That omission became the center of the public anger directed at the mayor’s office in the days following the post.

Critics argue the sequence of events matters. A man accused of killing someone with disabilities died awaiting trial, and the mayor’s first public words went to the accused man’s relatives rather than the victim’s. From a conservative standpoint, that ordering reads as a values statement, whether intended that way or not, and it understandably angered people who feel victims get erased in these moments.

This Is Not The First Time This Pattern Has Played Out

Mamdani drew nearly identical criticism weeks earlier over the death of Clarence Woodward, an inmate at Rikers Island who had been awaiting trial for allegedly stabbing Jose Miranda to death in a Bronx laundromat in 2024. Mamdani said he was “deeply saddened” by Woodward’s death and that his thoughts were with Woodward’s family as they grieved. He did not name Miranda in that statement either, and Miranda’s family publicly said the mayor never mentioned their son.

The repetition of this pattern is what has turned a single social media post into a broader story. Two separate custodial deaths, two separate men facing murder charges, and two statements from the mayor that focused entirely on the accused rather than the people they were charged with killing. Reporters and commentators have noted the parallel explicitly.

The Mayor’s Defense And What Comes Next

Mamdani’s own words offer his side of this. Both statements frame the condolences as a response to someone dying while in the government’s custody, before any trial or conviction, and both point to a pending investigation into the circumstances of death. That is a defensible standard on its own. Cities do have a duty to account for people who die in their custody, guilty or not, and demanding answers about DOC procedures is reasonable regardless of the underlying charges.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing backlash after offering condolences to the family of an inmate who died in city custody without mentioning the murder and robbery charges he faced in connection with the death of a 26-year-old man with special needs. pic.twitter.com/rhHdeZyTVB

— Calvin Klein (@CalvinKleiofd) September 22, 2026

What the mayor’s office has not offered, in either case, is a parallel word of sympathy for the victims’ families or any acknowledgment that the men being mourned stood accused of violent crimes. That silence, repeated twice now, has become the actual controversy. Critics are not disputing that in-custody deaths deserve scrutiny. They are asking why victims keep going unmentioned while the accused receive the mayor’s public grief.