The death of a 33-year-old man at New Haven Correctional Center on Thursday marked the 10th death in the Department of Correction since the start of this year.
Gamboy Guaranda was found by a correction officer early Thursday morning in his cell with a bedsheet tied around his neck and the other end tied to the cell door. He was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead about half an hour after he was found. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.
Guaranda had been incarcerated since August of 2025 on charges of sexual assault in the first degree. He had a $250,000 bond.
Guranda’s passing followed the death of three individuals who died in the same week in early February. Andrey Desmond, 32, who was serving a 5-year sentence for a 2023 assault on Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Windsor, was found unresponsive in his cell in Garner Correctional Institution. The medical examiner ruled his death was the result of schizoaffective disorder, combined with a hereditary heart condition.
Noe Taveras, 40, and Clemente Giusto, 50, both died the same week — Taveras at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution and Giusto at Garner. Taveras’ death was ruled a suicide, while Giusto died from a blood clot.
In March, 29-year-old Christopher Root died at MacDougall-Walker from an overdose of fentanyl combined with alcohol and antidepressants.
Of the 10 deaths in Connecticut prisons since the start of the year, two — those of Taveras and Guaranda — have been ruled suicides. Another, that of 45-year-old Craig Whyte, who was found unresponsive in his cell at Osborn Correctional Institution on March 22, is still under investigation.
Lawmakers are considering a wide-ranging bill designed to address health care and nutrition in Connecticut prisons.
H.B. 5567 would provide the state’s Correction Ombuds with two additional positions in his office — a patient advocate and a mental health care clinician. It would require the department to create a list of “time-critical” medications and adopt protocols for distributing medications within certain time windows during a lockdown. The department would also be tasked with developing a pilot program so people with chronic conditions could administer their own medications.
The department would be given a quarterly “medical scorecard” based on its staffing levels, vacancies, use of temporary staff, and the number of people who have been dismissed or suspended. It would also have to create a “staffing contingency plan” for operating when staff fall below certain levels.
The bill also would require the Correction Ombuds’ office to hire someone to audit the department’s food and nutrition program. The auditor would be tasked with investigating the nutritional value of meals and whether people with restricted diets have access to specialized meals. And it would require DOC staff to go through four to eight hours of annual training on mental health issues, including trauma-informed practices. Staff also would have to be trained in implicit bias, deescalation and crisis prevention.
