The New York City man accused of sexually assaulting and killing Queens jogger Karina Vetrano claims he fears being beat up, receives contaminated food and is surrounded by masturbating inmates, all while he’s incarcerated at Rikers Island.
Chanel Lewis, 22, of Brooklyn, New York, is being held at Rikers Island while awaiting a retrial for the alleged sexual assault and strangulation murder of Vetrano, 30, while she was jogging near her Queens home in August 2016.
A mistrial was declared in November after just a day and a half of jury deliberations resulted in jurors reporting that they were split and did not believe they’d be able to come to a unanimous decision.
Chanel Lewis, 22, accused of sexually assaulting and murdering jogger Karina Vetrano, has told the New York Post that he is being traumatized by his time at Rikers Island
Lewis said that prison guards are encouraging inmates to beat him up and that prisoner masturbation habits are having a detrimental effect on his food
The New York Post now reports that, over a series of phone calls from Rikers, Lewis told them that he is being traumatized by his time at the famous prison.
He said that corrections supervisors ‘are trying to tell inmates to beat me up,’ but admitted that he hadn’t actually been injured.
Lewis said that the correction officers were also encouraging inmates to call him names, including ‘a f—-t, the a-word and the p-word.’
He also had several complaints about fellow inmates’ masturbation habits.
Lewis claimed that female corrections officers were encouraging inmates while they pleasured themselves, telling the men that they ‘wanna wrap their legs around them and get an orgasm,’ a statement that Lewis thought was ‘really gross.’
Lewis is accused of sexually assaulting and murdering Katrina Vetrano, 30, while she was jogging near her Queens home in August 2016
Vetrano was said to have fought back against her attacker until the very end, when she was strangled to death
Lewis said that he ‘finished her off’ while confessing to Vetrano’s murder in February 2017
The Post reported that Lewis was most vocal about the fact that the inmates, through their frequent masturbation, were getting their DNA in his food by passing it from their hands to those of the female corrections officers, who then transferred it to Lewis when they gave him his food and water.
Lewis apparently called the female officers a ‘health hazard,’ noting ‘Food inside the hot pot is contaminated,’ and said that he wanted to be transferred to the Brooklyn House of Detention because inmates are able to draw their own water there.
A spokesperson for the City Department of Corrections told the newspaper that Lewis’ ‘allegations are troubling, and claims about the safety and wellbeing of people in custody is something we take seriously. We will investigate this immediately.’
Prosecutors have said they will move to retry Lewis, who is due back in court on January 22. Lewis faces faces life in prison if convicted of murdering Vetrano.
Vetrano was punched in the face, thrown to the ground, violently sexually assaulted and then strangled in a marsh, about a block away from her house. Her body was later discovered by her father, Philip Vetrano.
Lewis is being held at Rikers Island while he away retrial for Vetrano’s murder
Authorities said that she fought for her life until the very end, biting her attacker so hard that her teeth cracked.
Despite making a videotaped confession, in which he admitted to killing Vetrano, saying he spotted her at random and snapped, Lewis pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and aggravated sex abuse.
His lawyers have argued that the confession was coerced by keeping Lewis isolated during his six-hour interrogation.
Lewis reportedly refused to speak with white detectives and only confessed when a black detective was brought in.
His remarks to detectives that he didn’t like people ‘over there’, referring to the largely Italian-American Howard Beach neighborhood, led to speculation that the attack may have been racially motivated.
In February, a judge decided to let DNA evidence and the videotaped confession be used at trial.
Lewis’ attorneys previously questioned the validity of his DNA sample from a consensual cheek swab, which was compared to DNA evidence recovered from under the victim’s fingernails, and the manner in which his confession was gained.
Lewis told the New York Post that he is ‘completely innocent.’