Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly mourned an accused career criminal killer who died on Rikers Island this week — and the family of the victim killed in the sick, unprovoked attack is now livid, The Post has learned.
Hizzoner said on X that he was “deeply saddened” by the in-custody death — the seventh so far this year at the troubled jail complex — adding that, “my thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss.”
The inmate was identified as 41-year-old Clarence Woodward, an ex-con with nearly 30 arrests on his rap sheet, who was found unresponsive in his cell shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday while awaiting trial for murder in the gruesome 2024 attack at a Bronx laundromat.
To the family of victim Jose Miranda, the mayor’s statement was “a slap in the face.”
“It’s terrible,” his grieving mother, Marisol Miranda, told The Post on Thursday, adding, “That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all.”
The Rockland Country resident said that the mayor’s sorrow was misplaced, and should have instead been aimed at her beloved son, a 45-year-old dad of two who worked as a barber when he was stabbed to death.
“I’m not happy with what [Mamdani] did and I need him talking about my son. He was killed,” she said.
Angel Miranda, the victim’s younger brother, agreed: “That’s not right.”
“He could have paid his regards but acknowledged us too,” Miranda, 41, noted. “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,” he said.
“It was a slap in the face,” Miranda added.
His mom said she had been dreading Woodward’s murder trial and having to hear “what he did to me, what he did to my son” in open court.
But she said that as a Christian woman, she did not want to speak badly about the accused killer.
“I leave everything in God’s hands. He’s the one who can judge,” Marisol Miranda said.
Woodward faced life in prison if he’d been convicted of murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault and weapons charges in the Aug. 8, 2024, attack at 303 Laundromat in the Claremont section of The Bronx.
He’d been out after a stint in state prison for only about a month when police said Woodward randomly attacked Miranda and another man at around 2:40 a.m. inside the business, which was open 24/7.
The homeless parolee first stabbed Jose Miranda, who was sitting in a chair, multiple times in the legs, torso and back, leaving him mortally wounded, police said.
He then attacked the second victim, a 47-year-old homeless man who had been sleeping inside the laundromat, stabbing him in the legs and torso, according to cops.
Shocking surveillance images showed the blood-splattered scene, with one man laying in a pool of blood on the floor and the second victim slumped over on a box while the suspect stood over them both.
Another image showed the killer moments before he plunged the knife into Miranda’s back.
Cops later found two meat cleavers on the stoop outside the business, WABC-TV reported at the time.
Woodward, who was living in a Brooklyn homeless shelter back then, had 29 unsealed arrests on his rap sheet, dating back to a 2002 criminal trespass bust in The Bronx, law enforcement sources said.
His criminal record also included four felony robbery arrests, five assaults and several weapons, drug possession and larceny charges, the sources said.
He served a five-year prison sentence for attempted robbery and assault, and was released on parole from the upstate Collins Correctional Facility on July 3, 2024 — just a month before the bloody Bronx stabbings.
Woodward’s last arrests before he was shipped to state prison were a pair of assault cases in June 2019 and busts for robbery, weapons possession and petty larceny in May 2018, according to sources.
City Department of Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards called Woodward’s death a “tragedy” that would be “thoroughly investigated” in a statement.
“Our department mourns the loss of Clarence Woodward and we share our deepest condolences with his family and loved ones,” he said.
Woodward’s death was the seventh at Rikers so far this year, according to advocacy group Vera, which also said 15 people died in city DOC custody last year.
“We do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island. The Department of Correction and its oversight partners will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death,” Mamdani added in his own statement.
“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 democratic socialist mayor has posted similar statements about the other inmates who have died in custody so far this year.
It’s not clear if he knew what Woodward had been charged with when he posted about his death, and City Hall didn’t answer The Post’s questions.
Woodward’s defense attorney and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office also didn’t comment.
Bronx residents who spoke to The Post on Thursday were similarly taken aback by the mayor’s eulogizing of Woodward, who they said was a known troublemaker in the neighborhood.
“A lot of people would talk bad about him,” Alfredo Avila, who works as a barber in the neighborhood, said about Woodward, calling him “kind of crazy.”
“He was always on drugs. He had just come out of jail.”
By contrast, he said Miranda was a nice guy who “didn’t look for trouble with nobody. He was sleeping at the laundromat because he didn’t have another place to live.”
Herman Gonzalez, who manages the local Bronx Super Shop Fair supermarket, agreed that the slain man, who was nicknamed “El Bori,” was well liked on the block — and chided Mamdani for shedding a tear for “an assassin.”
“It’s totally upside down,” Gonzalez said. “He should realize why that guy was in jail.”
— Additional reporting by Larry Celona
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