Man dies in solitary confinement at MDC Brooklyn; sources suspect OD

A 25-year-old man with “severe, persistent mental illness” has died in solitary confinement in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail — the second death in the notorious lock-up in the last three months.

Godfrie Cole was found unresponsive in his cell in the Sunset Park jail’s segregated housing unit on Tuesday, with pills nearby according to sources familiar with his death. His cause of death isn’t known, but sources said authorities suspect he overdosed on drugs.

Jail staff tried to revive him, and medics took him to a nearby hospital, but he couldn’t be saved, according to a Bureau of Prisons statement. “No employees or other incarcerated individuals were injured and at no time was the public in danger,” the statement reads.

“Godfrie Cole was a healthy 25-year-old with his whole life ahead of him. His birthday was next month. Instead, he died in MDC’s special housing unit, where he was supposed to be closely monitored,” said his lawyers, Siobhan Atkins and Benjamin Yaster of the Federal Defenders, in a statement  “Mr. Cole’s senseless death shows that MDC still cannot be trusted to protect the health and lives of its inmate population, even in its most secure areas.”

Atkins is asking MDC’s legal staff to preserve all of its documents and medical records about Cole, including videos of the hallway outside his cell for the six hours before his death, and of Cole in his cell for the 24 hours leading up to his death.

“It’s unacceptable,” Cole’s twin sister, Angel Cole, told the Daily News. “Although it’s jail, and it’s a place for people to be locked down, I think that they still should be protected. Why does he even have access to drugs?”

Cole, who’d been locked up since January 2024, was sentenced on April 28 in Manhattan Federal Court to four years behind bars for a convenience store robbery in the Bronx.

He was still housed in MDC Brooklyn as he awaited prosecution for an alleged assault on another inmate.

In a Thursday letter about his death, Atkins referenced the sentencing judge, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer, recognizing “how unsuitable MDC is for a defendant like Mr. Cole” and setting several conditions to protect him as part of his sentencing.

Those conditions included the Bureau of Prisons sending him to a federal medical center either in Devens, Mass. or Butner, N.C., and his entry into a trauma treatment program.

She asked for a conference with federal prosecutors and Bureau of Prison officials “to effectuate and prevent the frustration of [this Court’s] orders.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Balsamello, who’s assigned to the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, pushed back in a letter Saturday, arguing that the judge could only give “recommendations,” not orders to the Bureau of Prisons regarding where Cole would be housed.

“The request for a conference in this Court is also unusual — and, the Government submits, misplaced—given that this SDNY case was concluded almost three months ago, whereas the EDNY (Eastern District of New York) case was ongoing and in fact remains open,” he wrote.

Cole, who struggled with mental illness since childhood, was sent to a federal medical center in Butner, N.C., after Engelmayer ruled he wasn’t competent to stand trial in August 2024. He spent more than a year there until he was returned to the MDC in October.

“We went almost 1.5 years without hearing his voice or seeing him because he had been moved from the MDC and we didn’t know what was happening,” his mother, Anna Cole, wrote the judge in a letter in April. “We didn’t get a call that they moved him. It was so horrible because if they took my child and killed him or did anything to him, I don’t know if I’d know.”

Cole accidentally lit himself on fire at age 4, and was pushed in front of a car by another child when he was young. He started smoking pot at age 9 and taking K2 at age 12, around when his mental health symptoms started to manifest, Atkins wrote in her sentencing letter.

“The conditions Mr. Cole has faced while at Butner and at MDC, for the past two and a half years, have been horrifying. At various points, he was ‘on suicide watch in a cold and desolate cell with only a paper smock as clothing, in special housing units isolated from other people, and in a medical facility where he was tied from each limb and given heavy doses of psychiatric medications,’” she wrote, quoting from a re-entry plan.

Cole was looking forward to finishing his sentence and coming home to his family, where he could “sit quietly on the couch, far away from the stress and chaos of prison,” supported by his family until he figured out the next steps in his life, she wrote.

“He was a sweetheart. You know, he was a funny guy,” Angel Cole said. “He was like six-four, had a big build on him. So anytime he would hug you, it’s like a big bear, but it’s like it’s so soft, and you could just feel that when he hugs you, he means it.”

She said people often got the wrong idea about him because of his height and size., and that he was passionate about football and making music. “He’s so much more than than people got to see,” she said. “He cares, and loves everybody and wants everybody to be happy. He will give anybody anything. Like if he got it, you got it.”

His death comes nearly three months after the death of Carlos Alberto Guerrero Mercado, 47, who was found hanging in his cell. Mercado was one of 37 Mexican citizens shipped to the U.S. in January to face narcoterrorism and cartel-related charges.

MDC didn’t see any deaths in 2025, and four in 2024 — including two stabbing murders over a six-week stretch in the summer of 2024.

The jail, which houses alleged CEO-killer Luigi Mangione and ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, is notorious for its dire conditions and violence,

It’s New York City’s only active federal jail. The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan was shuttered in 2021, two years after sex fiend financier Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself there.