Vivian Vasquez described a heavy pain in her heart.

"Yo tengo mucho dolor mi corazon," she said, referring to the pain of losing her son.

She got the call on the evening of Feb. 26.


What You Need To Know

  • Franklyn Dominguez was the seventh person to die in a state prison since correction officers went on strike

  • Dominguez was found unresponsive in a cell and unable to be revived, the state Department of Corrections told NY1

  • Correctional officers had been protesting working conditions and restrictions on use of solitary confinement against prisoners

Franklyn Dominguez, a 35-year-old prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Westchester County, had died.

He was the seventh person to die in a state correctional facility since correction officers walked off the job in illegal wildcat strikes, protesting restrictions on solitary confinement.

Dominguez’s mother last spoke to him about two weeks ago.

“He said, ‘OK mommy, take care of yourself. Bye-bye,’” Vasquez said.

Now, his family says they are left without much information from prison officials or the medical examiner.

“Here I am a week later. I still have no answers,” his sister Vivian Dominguez said.

The family is just left with their memories of Franky from better times. As a kid, he was a runner with more awards and medals than his family can put on the shelves and walls of their Manhattan apartment.

“He was covered a lot in all news outlets because they were so amazed that this kid was running and winning all these races,” Vivian Dominguez said.

Prison staff found Dominguez unconscious in his cell, according to the New York State Department of Corrections. Staff called an ambulance and tried to revive Dominguez with CPR, a defibrillator and the overdose drug Narcan.

EMTs also tried to revive him, but a doctor from a local hospital pronounced him dead at 8:48 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 26.

Dominguez left behind four children. His sister said he had struggled with hard drugs since he was 16 years old.

“His life just turned downhill from there,” she said.

Dominguez got to Sing Sing in 2022 after receiving a six-year sentence for an assault charge against a correction officer at a Manhattan jail. When he died, he had pending cases for violating multiple orders of protection.

If it was an overdose, Vivian Dominguez said she wants to know how her brother got the drugs. But she also wants to know about the head wound she says she saw on the body.

“He had a gash on his head and it just leaves us with more questions of, what did my brother die of?” she asked. “We need answers.”

“We demand that this doesn’t happen to another family,” she continued. “We could feel their pain now.”

The family is now waiting on a cause of death from the Westchester County medical examiner. Vivian Dominguez says she was told it could take as long as 16 weeks.