Last week, the city of New York announced that it would pay Nicholas Feliciano’s family a record-breaking $28.7 million settlement for his treatment while jailed on Rikers Island. While Feliciano survived his suicide attempt, his family said he’ll never fully recover from the brain damage he suffered. “It was like a baby starting all over again,” his grandmother Madeline Feliciano told NY1. “He needed to learn how to eat, how to walk, how to use the bathroom.”
Surveillance video from Rikers Island shows jail officers failing to intervene for for 7 minutes and 51 seconds, as 18-year-old Feliciano attempted suicide, reports Spectrum News NY 1, which spoke to the young man's family. Feliciano was detained in Rikers Island for a parole violation. He had a history of suicide attempts but was still placed in general population and was not given his antipsychotic medication. “This case is one of the most egregious I think anyone’s seen,” Feliciano’s family attorney said. New York City’s law department stated that “The settlement of this tragic case was in the best interest of all parties.”