New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly grieved the in-custody death of a man charged with a random meat-cleaver murder in the Bronx, and never mentioned the victim or his family.
Clarence Woodward, 41, was found unresponsive in his Rikers Island cell shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday. He had been held without bail on charges of murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault, and weapons possession for the August 8, 2024, stabbing death of Jose Miranda, a 45-year-old father of two, inside a 24-hour laundromat in the Claremont section of the Bronx. Woodward's cause of death has not been determined.
Within hours, the mayor's official account on X posted a statement calling himself "deeply saddened" by Woodward's death. "My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss," Mamdani wrote. He said nothing about Miranda, the man Woodward was accused of killing while he slept in a chair at roughly 2:40 a.m. that August morning. He said nothing about Miranda's mother in Rockland County, or his younger brother, or his two children.
By Thursday, the Miranda family had seen the post. Their reaction was blunt.
Marisol Miranda, Jose's mother, told the New York Post she had spent months dreading Woodward's murder trial, dreading having to sit in a courtroom and relive what she described as "what he did to me, what he did to my son." Woodward's death spared her that ordeal. The mayor's public sympathy for the man accused of killing her son did not spare her anything.
"It's terrible. That's not fair. That's not fair at all. I'm not happy with what [Mamdani] did and I need him talking about my son. He was killed."
Marisol Miranda said she did not want to speak badly about the accused killer. She called herself a Christian. But the mayor's one-sided grief left her shaken.
"I leave everything in God's hands. He's the one who can judge."
Angel Miranda, Jose's 41-year-old brother, was less restrained. He called Mamdani's post "a slap in the face" and said the mayor owed the family at least a mention.
"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."
City Hall did not answer the Post's questions. It remains unclear whether Mamdani even knew what Woodward had been charged with when he posted his condolences. The Bronx District Attorney's Office also declined to comment.
Woodward's criminal history stretched back more than two decades. Law enforcement sources told the Post he had 29 unsealed arrests on his record beginning with a 2002 criminal trespass charge in the Bronx. The rap sheet included four felony robbery arrests, five assaults, and multiple weapons, drug possession, and larceny charges. He served a five-year prison sentence for attempted robbery and assault.
His last arrests before that state prison stretch were an assault case in June 2019 and charges of robbery, weapons possession, and petty larceny in May 2018. He was released on parole from Collins Correctional Facility in upstate New York on July 3, 2024, roughly one month before the laundromat attack. At the time of the stabbing, he was living in a Brooklyn homeless shelter.
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has faced a string of political controversies since taking office. Immigrant grocers have sued him over a city-owned supermarket plan, and his relationship with law enforcement has been strained at best.
Jose Miranda, by contrast, left behind a quieter story. Born in Chicago, he grew up in Haverstraw in Rockland County and graduated from North Rockland High School in 1995. He became a barber, a tattooist, and, in his brother's words, "a tortured artist." In later years he lived on East 170th Street in the Bronx, struggled with addiction, and went through rehab. He had an arrangement to sleep at the 303 Laundromat and served as its unofficial caretaker.
Angel Miranda described his brother's routine at the laundromat: "He would sweep up and mop it, make it look nice." The night of August 8, Miranda had finished his work and fallen asleep in a chair. According to Angel, Woodward stabbed him from behind while he was "laying his head down looking the opposite way."
A second victim, a 47-year-old homeless man, was stabbed in the legs and torso during the same attack and survived. WABC-TV reported at the time that two meat cleavers were found on the stoop outside the laundromat. Woodward was arrested, charged, and held without bail. His last court hearing was July 28, with a return date of September 29. He would have faced life in prison if convicted of the murder charge.
People who knew both men in the Claremont neighborhood offered their own verdict on the mayor's statement. Alfredo Avila, a barber who worked nearby, told the Post that Woodward was well known locally, and not for good reasons.
"A lot of people would talk bad about him. He was always on drugs. He had just come out of jail."
Avila said Miranda, by contrast, "didn't look for trouble with nobody. He was sleeping at the laundromat because he didn't have another place to live."
Herman Gonzalez, a manager at the nearby Bronx Super Shop Fair supermarket, said Miranda, known around the block by his nickname "El Bori", was well liked. Gonzalez did not hold back about the mayor's post.
"It's totally upside down. He should realize why that guy was in jail."
Mamdani has drawn public anger before. He was booed off stage at an NYPD celebration on Staten Island, and an ethics complaint accused him of using city resources to boost Democratic candidates. But the Woodward episode struck a different nerve, a mayor extending public sympathy to an accused killer while ignoring the family of the man he allegedly murdered.
Fox News reported that Mamdani's post was viewed more than 3.2 million times, with the majority of comments expressing outrage. The backlash came from both sides of the aisle. 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 it more sharply, as Breitbart reported:
"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?"
Mamdani's full statement went beyond personal grief. He used Woodward's death to advocate for closing Rikers Island entirely. "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," the mayor wrote. City Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards echoed the tone, calling Woodward's death a "tragedy" and pledging a thorough investigation.
"Our department mourns the loss of Clarence Woodward and we share our deepest condolences with his family and loved ones."
Woodward's death was the seventh at Rikers so far this year, according to the advocacy group Vera, which also reported that 15 people died in city Department of Correction custody last year. Those numbers are real, and the conditions at Rikers have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum for years.
But the Miranda family's complaint is not about jail reform. It is about a mayor who found time to grieve a man with 29 arrests and a pending murder charge, and could not find a single sentence for the man he allegedly killed. East Harlem shop owners who have clashed with Mamdani over other policies might recognize the pattern: a City Hall that talks about systemic problems and forgets the people standing in front of them.
When a city's leader mourns the accused before he mentions the victim, the priorities are not just misplaced, they are backward.
