New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly grieved the death of a Rikers Island inmate charged with hacking a Bronx shop owner to death with a meat cleaver, drawing fierce backlash from critics who noted he offered no such condolences to the victim's family.
Clarence Woodward, 39, died in custody at the Rikers Island jail complex under circumstances the city has not explained. Mamdani's response came the same day, and it read like a eulogy for a man whose rap sheet, according to Fox News, included 27 prior arrests before the killing that put him behind bars.
The mayor called Woodward "a New Yorker in City custody" and said his thoughts were with the dead man's "family and loved ones." He did not name Jose Miranda, the 45-year-old father of two whom Woodward allegedly butchered inside a Bronx laundromat in August 2024. He did not mention Miranda's children. He did not link to the GoFundMe page Miranda's family set up to bury him.
Police said the attack was unprovoked. At approximately 2:40 a.m. on August 8, 2024, Woodward walked into the 303 Laundromat in the Bronx carrying a meat cleaver. He allegedly stabbed Miranda in the legs and upper body, then turned the blade on a second man, 47, slashing him in the back. Both victims were rushed to Lincoln Hospital. Miranda did not survive. The second man lived.
Woodward, a homeless parolee, had reportedly been released from prison roughly one month before the attack. He was arrested days later and charged with murder, manslaughter, and assault. He had been held at Rikers awaiting trial when he died.
Miranda was known in his community as an artist, tattooist, and barber. His family described him as a devoted father. The GoFundMe campaign asked for help giving him "a proper goodbye."
Mamdani, who has faced repeated public backlash over his approach to public safety, chose a different focus. His statement centered entirely on the man charged with Miranda's killing.
Fox News reported that Woodward had accumulated 27 prior arrests before the meat-cleaver attack. He had received parole just weeks before allegedly taking Miranda's life. The mayor's office offered no explanation for why Mamdani issued public condolences for Woodward but not for Miranda.
Mamdani's post on X drew more than 3.2 million views, and the reaction was blistering. New York City Councilwoman Vicky Paladino responded directly:
"I wonder if he was deeply saddened by the murder this guy committed. Can't find a tweet about that one."
GOP strategist Mehek Cooke framed the contrast even more sharply:
"A father of two was hacked to death with a meat cleaver after his killer was repeatedly paroled. And you think the real villain is the jail?"
Other users on X called out Mamdani for mourning Woodward while apparently offering nothing to Miranda's family. The mayor's office, as Breitbart reported, did not address whether Mamdani had ever publicly acknowledged Miranda's death or reached out to his relatives.
Rather than address the questions about his silence on Miranda, Mamdani pivoted to policy. He renewed his administration's commitment to closing Rikers Island "as quickly as possible" and said the Department of Correction and unnamed oversight partners would investigate the circumstances of Woodward's death.
The cause of death remains unknown. Mamdani acknowledged as much in his statement but immediately broadened the frame: "We do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island."
That sentence did a lot of work. It folded an accused murderer's death into a broader indictment of the jail system itself, positioning the facility, not the violent crime that sent Woodward there, as the central problem. For a mayor already under fire for leaving town during mounting crises, the timing and tone of the statement struck critics as revealing.
Closing Rikers has been a long-running progressive priority in New York City politics. But using the death of a man charged with an unprovoked meat-cleaver murder to advance that cause handed critics a ready-made case study in misplaced priorities.
The contrast between the city's response to the two deaths sits at the center of the backlash. Jose Miranda, by every available account, was a working man, a shop owner, a father, a barber who made his living serving his neighbors in the Bronx. He was in a laundromat in the middle of the night when a stranger with a meat cleaver ended his life.
His family turned to crowdfunding to pay for his funeral. The city's mayor turned to X to mourn the man charged with his murder.
Mamdani's administration has faced a growing pattern of credibility problems, from questions about the mayor's own public persona to controversies involving those closest to his political operation, including a former campaign staffer who posted false claims about an antisemitic attack. Each episode reinforces the same concern: that this administration's instincts run toward ideology first and accountability second.
No one disputes that deaths in custody deserve investigation. Jails have a duty to keep inmates alive, and failures in that duty are serious. But a mayor's first public words after a jailhouse death carry weight, and Mamdani chose to spend that weight on a man with 27 prior arrests who allegedly walked into a laundromat and butchered a stranger.
He did not spend it on Jose Miranda. He did not spend it on Miranda's two children. He did not spend it on the 47-year-old man who survived a blade in his back.
When a city's leader tells you who earns his sympathy, believe him.
