A man held on Rikers Island for a high-profile Brooklyn murder was caught with a cell phone even though he was on court-ordered lockdown designed to limit his communications outside the jails, the Daily News has learned.
Ricky Torres, 22, is being held in a high security unit in the West Facility, charged in the 2020 murder of Daniel Tsarev, 19, in Brooklyn. A recent search recovered the 7-inch, blue phone hidden in a pillow in his cell, internal Correction Department records show.
Correction Department spokeswoman Annais Morales confirmed that a phone was found at West and that an investigation is ongoing. In a followup search, a second phone was found in that same jail, Morales confirmed. She did not specifically indicate who was linked to the second phone.
The West Facility was originally created for people with communicable diseases but now often houses other high-profile suspects who require higher security including, currently, alleged cop killer Guy Rivera, accused of murdering NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller, and Matthew Karalefsky, convicted and recently sentenced for arson in the torching a Brooklyn rabbi’s home, DOC records show.
It is also the facility where former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sent on Wednesday after he was sentenced to five months in jail for perjury.
Sidney Schwartzbaum, a former correction supervisors union president, said it’s a serious security breach, “especially if there’s a court-ordered lockdown.”
“That flies in the face of the purpose of the lockdown. The security deputy warden should institute a policy where he is searched every day, and they should be closely monitoring the Genentech cameras.”
Cell phones are barred in the jails, but Torres was also under a court-ordered lockdown issued in January 2023, according to a person familiar with the case and Torres’ lawyer Samuel Karliner.
“It’s sort of surprising DOC would even publicize it [the phone discovery],” Karliner said. “That’s a real breakdown in the job they are supposed to be doing. It strikes me as odd.”
Karalefsky was sentenced to state prison on March 18, but has yet to be transferred there.
Karliner said Brooklyn Judge Vincent Del Guidice issued the lockdown order Jan. 11, 2023, at the request of prosecutors to prohibit outside contact after Torres was remanded for the Tsarev murder in 2020. Karliner said he opposed the request.
Karliner said the request for the order was made by the Correction Department.
“It was how they were handling people at the time,” Karliner said. “They felt they were unable to do it of their own accord and asked for judicial intervention. It was their way then of separating people at the facility.”
The lockdown order was modified on Aug. 28, 2023, and again on Nov. 14, 2023, to allow Torres to communicate with his civil lawyer and his mother, a person familiar with the case said.
The modifications followed a lawsuit Torres filed Feb. 27, 2023, against the city in Manhattan federal court alleging he had been illegally held in his cell 23 hours a day since Dec. 29, 2021. “This classification is nothing short of solitary confinement by a different name,” Torres wrote in the lawsuit.
The suit alleges correction officers trashed his cell during a search and a correction officer told him, “I am going to make your life a living hell by having my guys beat your ass daily,” the lawsuit alleges.
On Jan. 7, 2023, Torres alleges officers punched him in the stomach. The complaint alleges no one responded to his complaints.
Karliner said he spoke to Torres, but Torres was unaware that any phone had been recovered from him.
“No infractions were lodged against him, nor were any other actions taken against him,” Karliner said.
Torres was one of two people charged in the murder of Tsarev, who was shot and killed on Aug. 11, 2020, in Sheepshead Bay in what police said was a marijuana deal gone wrong, The News previously reported.
Torres, then 19, was arrested on Aug. 14, 2020, three days after the killing. A second man, Kareem Parkes, 22, was arrested three months later on Nov. 27, 2020, police said.
Parkes, listed in DOC records as 6-feet-3 and 350 pounds, was also remanded. He is being held at the North Infirmary Command, also on Rikers Island.
Torres was still housed in the West Facility on Friday, DOC records show.
