The death of an accused murderer found unconscious while in city Department of Correction custody at Queens Criminal Court has been ruled a suicide by hanging, officials said Thursday.
Luis Alberto Lopez Castillo, 20, took his own life on Sept. 16 while being held at the courthouse after a pre-trial hearing for a robbery arrest, the city’s medical examiner confirmed. He is the eighth person to die in DOC custody this year.
Correction officers immediately began performing CPR after finding Castillo in “medical distress” at 6:38 p.m., DOC officials said. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:54 p.m.
“The idea that our criminal legal system produces so much despair should be chilling to all of us,” said Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda. “For Mr. Lopez Castillo, that included a year and counting at Rikers with no resolution to his case. We are grieving with his family at this horrific confirmation.”
Lopez Castillo was being held at Rikers for murder in the death of Ronell Marte, a 26-year-old autistic man who was shot in the chest in the Bronx’s Starlight Park near West Farms Road and E. 174th St. on Sept. 4, 2025.
“I extend my condolences to his family,” Mayor Mamdani wrote on X the next day, drawing outrage from political pundits and critics on social media, who chastised the mayor for failing to mention Castillo’s victim in his post.
Marte was killed when Lopez Castillo and his accomplice, Axel Martinez, 20, tried to rob him in the park, according to police. Martinez — not Lopez Castillo — shot Marte, cops said at the time.
The shooting victim’s family described him as a hard worker who was walking home through the park when he was killed because he feared the subway after a beating he took in the city’s transit system.
“He took a shortcut through the park and, heartbreakingly, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and only five minutes away from home,” his sister Nelroby Marte wrote in a GoFundMe post.
Lopez Castillo was in court for a July 10, 2025, Queens robbery. He was arrested later that day after the robbery and was released with non-monetary conditions after pleading not guilty.