Mayor Zohran Mamdani is drawing fresh fire for offering condolences over an accused murderer’s death while saying nothing about the victim the man allegedly killed.
The controversy erupted Thursday when Mamdani, 33, posted on X about the death of Luis Alberto Lopez Castillo, 20, who died in Department of Corrections custody the previous evening. Castillo had been facing murder, manslaughter, robbery and weapons charges in the 2025 slaying of Ron Marte, 26, an autistic man from the Bronx.
“I extend my condolences to his family,” Mamdani wrote about Castillo on X.
Users on X quickly tore into the mayor for the post. “He robbed and murdered a 26 yo disabled man. You’re a monster,” one user posted. Another fired back, “Why do you mourn the death of prisoners and not one single victim.”
The backlash spread rapidly across the platform. “Here you go again siding with criminals, sending your condolences to them instead of siding with the victims,” one user wrote. That same poster added, “You have no moral compass, no decency, no conscience. Shame on you!”
“That’s his pattern at this point,” another user posted, pointing to a similar incident just weeks earlier.
The criticism mirrored the uproar Mamdani faced last month after he mourned the death of accused killer Clarence Woodward at Rikers Island. Relatives of Woodward’s alleged victim had called those remarks a “slap in the face” because they did not acknowledge their loss.
DOC staff spotted Castillo in “medical distress” at Queens Criminal Court around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and performed CPR until EMS transported him to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead just before 8 p.m. The Department said it is still investigating the death.
Castillo had been in court that day for charges tied to a separate incident, according to a Gothamist report.
The case against Castillo centered on a brutal early morning ambush in Starlight Park in the Bronx. Castillo was accused of robbing Marte of his cellphone as Marte walked home from an Amazon warehouse shift. Prosecutors alleged Castillo’s accomplice, Axel Martinez, shot Marte in the chest during the attack.
Marte’s killing had drawn attention both for its violence and for the vulnerability of its victim, a young autistic man simply making his way home from work through a park in the early morning hours.
The mayor’s post about Castillo made no mention of Marte, his family, or the circumstances of the slaying that had put the 20-year-old in DOC custody to begin with.