New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a public condolence for a Rikers Island inmate charged with a brutal stabbing murder, and never once named the victim, leaving the dead man's family furious.
Clarence Woodward, 41, was found unresponsive in his Rikers Island cell shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday. He had been awaiting trial on charges of murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault, and weapons possession in connection with the August 2024 stabbing death of Jose Miranda, a 45-year-old father of two, inside a Bronx laundromat. Woodward faced life in prison if convicted. He never made it to trial.
Within hours, the city's democratic socialist mayor took to X to announce he was "deeply saddened by the death of a New Yorker in City custody." Mamdani added that "my thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss." He pledged an investigation. He renewed his commitment to closing Rikers. He said nothing about Jose Miranda. He said nothing about Miranda's mother, his brother, or his two children. The New York Post reported that City Hall did not answer questions about whether Mamdani even knew what Woodward had been charged with when he posted.
The post drew more than 3.2 million views, Fox News reported, and created a wave of backlash from critics who asked why the mayor reserved his public grief for the accused and offered none for the victim.
In West Haverstraw, New York, about 40 miles north of the city, Marisol Miranda sat in her home Thursday and learned what the mayor of New York had written about the man charged with killing her son. She did not hold back.
"It's terrible. That's not fair. That's not fair at all."
Marisol Miranda, described as a devout Christian who did not want to speak badly about Woodward, told the Post she was angry at Mamdani's choice to mourn the accused without any mention of Jose.
"I'm not happy with what [Mamdani] did and I need him talking about my son. He was killed."
Her younger son, Angel Miranda, 41, was more direct. He said Mamdani's post felt like "a slap in the face." Angel told the Post that the mayor could have offered condolences for Woodward's death while still acknowledging the family that lost someone first, and lost him violently.
"He could have paid his regards but acknowledged us too. He should have mentioned us first and then, 'Sorry the person that did it also has passed away too.'"
"At least give us a little heads up and a little gratuity towards us. We lost a family member. You can never replace that. I'm still going through it."
The Miranda family had been dreading the murder trial. Woodward's death meant they would never see a verdict. And the first public statement they heard from the city's top elected official was sympathy, for the man accused of taking Jose's life. Mamdani's pattern of prioritizing the accused over victims has drawn sharp criticism before.
Clarence Woodward was no stranger to the criminal justice system. His rap sheet carried 29 unsealed prior arrests stretching back to a 2002 criminal trespass charge in the Bronx. The record included four felony robbery arrests, five assaults, several weapons charges, drug possession, and larceny. He served a five-year prison sentence for attempted robbery and assault at Collins Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
On July 3, 2024, Woodward walked out of Collins on parole. He moved into a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Roughly one month later, on August 8, 2024, at approximately 2:40 a.m., he allegedly walked into the 303 Laundromat in the Claremont section of the Bronx and stabbed Jose Miranda multiple times in the legs, torso, and back. He also allegedly stabbed a second victim, a 47-year-old homeless man, in the legs and torso. Two meat cleavers were found on the stoop outside the laundromat, WABC-TV reported at the time.
Miranda died from his wounds. Woodward was arrested and held without bail. He was charged with murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault, and weapons offenses. Online court records showed his last hearing was July 28, with a return date of September 29.
Jose Miranda was born in Chicago, grew up in Haverstraw, New York, and graduated from North Rockland High School in 1995. His family called him "El Bori." A former neighbor told the Post he had struggled with addiction, been kicked out of his apartment on East 170th Street in the Bronx, and later entered rehab. By the time of his death, he was working as a caretaker at the laundromat, sweeping, mopping, and sometimes sleeping there after finishing up.
Angel Miranda described his brother as "a tortured artist" with "an artistic flair." He painted a picture of a man who was getting his life together, not looking for trouble.
Alfredo Avila, a barber who works in the Claremont neighborhood, told the Post that Woodward was well known in the area and not well liked.
"A lot of people would talk bad about him. He was always on drugs. He had just come out of jail."
Avila described Woodward as "kind of crazy." But he had a different memory of Miranda: a man who "didn't look for trouble with nobody" and "was sleeping at the laundromat because he didn't have another place to live." The contrast between the two men, one with 29 arrests and a fresh parole, the other sleeping in a chair at a 24-hour laundromat, makes the mayor's one-sided sympathy harder to explain.
Herman Gonzalez, manager of a local Bronx supermarket, was blunt about Mamdani's statement.
"It's totally upside down. He should realize why that guy was in jail."
Gonzalez said the mayor was shedding a tear for "an assassin." That word is Gonzalez's characterization, not a legal finding. But it captures the anger in a neighborhood that watched a man with a long record of violent offenses walk out of prison and, within weeks, allegedly take a life. The mayor's growing disconnect from ordinary New Yorkers has surfaced repeatedly, from public confrontations at NYPD events to policy disputes at City Hall.
The mayor's X post was not just a condolence. It was a platform. Mamdani wrote that "we do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island." He added that "the Department of Correction and its oversight partners will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death." Then he pivoted to his administration's signature criminal-justice priority.
"Our administration is fully committed to the critical work of creating better conditions in our city's jail system and closing Rikers Island as quickly as possible."
NYC Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards echoed the tone. He said the department "mourns the loss of Clarence Woodward" and offered "deepest condolences with his family and loved ones." Richards called the death a "tragedy" and said it would be "thoroughly investigated."
Woodward's death was the seventh in-custody death at Rikers so far this year, Breitbart noted, citing data from the advocacy group Vera. Fifteen people died in city DOC custody last year. Those numbers are real, and conditions at Rikers have drawn bipartisan concern for years. But using the death of an accused murderer as the vehicle for that policy argument, without a word for the man he allegedly killed, is a choice that reveals priorities.
Woodward's defense attorney did not comment. The Bronx District Attorney's Office also declined to comment. City Hall, as noted, did not answer the Post's questions about whether Mamdani knew the charges Woodward faced. The administration's habit of dodging pointed questions is by now familiar.
Marisol Miranda will not see the man accused of killing her son stand trial. There will be no verdict, no sentence, no public accounting in a courtroom. Woodward's death closed that door. And the first official words she heard from her city's mayor were words of sorrow, for him.
She told the Post she leaves the rest to a higher authority.
"I leave everything in God's hands. He's the one who can judge."
Angel Miranda was less forgiving. He recalled how his brother had been sleeping in the laundromat, head turned the other way, when the attack came. A mayor who has struggled to connect with the city he governs, whether on transit policy or public safety, chose in this moment to identify with the accused, not the victim.
When a city's leader mourns the man charged with murder and forgets the man who was murdered, the problem is not a careless staffer or a rushed post. It is a worldview, one that sees the system as the villain and the accused as the victim, no matter how long the rap sheet, no matter how defenseless the man asleep in the chair.
