An inmate at a New York state prison was pronounced dead Saturday after being found unresponsive in his cell, state officials said.

The inmate, Jonathan Grant, 61, was found Saturday morning at the Auburn Correctional Facility in Cayuga County, just west of Syracuse, according to the New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Security and medical workers at the prison and a member of the National Guard tried to revive him but were unsuccessful, said Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for the corrections department.

The cause of Grant’s death is under investigation. He had been unwell, according to two prisoners at Auburn and another person who reviewed information about Grant’s health. That person said Grant had had several strokes: At least five were documented, including at least one in the past few weeks. The two prisoners said Grant had asked for medical help days earlier but had been brushed off.

The corrections department did not respond to questions about Grant’s health before his death.

Grant entered custody in 2011 and was serving a sentence of 34 to 40 years for first-degree rape and burglary, Mailey said.

His death comes amid mounting tension and public scrutiny of the state’s prison system. Corrections officers at dozens of facilities, including Auburn, have continued wildcat strikes for days — without their union’s authorization and in defiance of a judge’s order — to protest what they say are dangerous working conditions, severe staffing shortages and forced overtime. Last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, deployed National Guard soldiers to act as replacement workers.

The strikes, the first widespread work stoppage in New York’s prisons since a 16-day walkout by officers in 1979, are also playing out just weeks after officers at another state prison fatally beat a 43-year-old inmate, Robert Brooks. Ten officers have been criminally charged in connection with the killing, six of them with murder. Some prisoners’ rights advocates have accused the striking officers of trying to distract attention from their colleagues’ role in Brooks’ death.

Even as the cause of Grant’s death remains unknown, advocates of prison safety say the strikes are creating hazardous conditions for inmates and warn that more deaths may occur if the labor dispute is not quickly resolved.

“We are hearing from clients across the state that they are not receiving critical medical care,” said Antony Gemmell, supervising lawyer for the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society. “If these strikes continue, I think it’s a question not of if we will see more deaths, but when.”

Likewise, the Correctional Association of New York, the nonprofit designated by state law to provide independent prison oversight, blamed the union for creating the circumstances that led to Grant not receiving medical attention.

“There’s just bound to be medical crises that get missed during this — it happens already,” said Jennifer Scaife, the association’s executive director. “It’s very scary to just imagine being in that situation and there’s no one there to come to your assistance.”

The correction officers union declined to comment Sunday.

The state has scrambled to quell the labor dispute. Last week, the state corrections commissioner suspended enforcement of parts of a state law that places limits on solitary confinement — a move the Prisoners’ Rights Project calls unlawful and dangerous to inmates. Many corrections officers have said that the law has made their jobs more dangerous and difficult and have called for its repeal.

In a statement Sunday, the governor’s office called on striking officers to return to work, saying that they were “jeopardizing the safety of their colleagues, the incarcerated population, and causing undue fear for the residents in the surrounding communities.”

The strike has continued even though a state judge in Erie County issued a temporary restraining order last week requiring striking officers to return to work immediately. He has given the officers until Tuesday to show why the strikes are proper.

At the maximum-security prison where Grant died, corrections officers had been on strike for several days. Prisoners there told The New York Times on Sunday that National Guard soldiers had stepped in to do security rounds, often accompanied by one corrections officer.

Around 10 p.m. Friday, the prisoners said, two National Guard members and a corrections officer conducted a security check in the unit to make sure all prisoners were accounted for. But one prisoner, Grant, did not respond, according to a prisoner whose cell is near Grant’s.

During a 7 a.m. check the next day, Grant was again unresponsive, the prisoner said. After attempts to revive him failed, Grant was pronounced dead at 8:32 a.m.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Most coaches are fond of extolling the virtues of “taking things one game at a time,” but after his Toronto Sceptres left Xcel Energy Center with a 2-1 victory over the Frost on Sunday afternoon, Sceptres coach Troy Ryan was more than happy to talk about breaking from the norm.

The Sceptres entered the game tied with the Frost for second place in the PWHL standings and have now won six in a row.

“We usually don’t, but we did look at this in a little bit of a three-game segment,” Ryan said. “We felt we had the opportunity to create some distance with New York with our last game. We targeted this game as a potential opportunity to battle for second place, with anticipation, if we were successful, that the next one against Montreal is for first pace.

“We don’t often look that far ahead, but we thought, on the road, to keep things interesting, we broke it down into a three-game segment and how all those games were so purposeful.”

Playing before an announced crowd of 8,770 in their first home game in nearly a month, the Frost came up short in trying to build off a 4-0 win over Montreal in their last game.

“It’s just big points,” Frost coach Ken Klee said of how his team approached the game. “I know we’re all kind of smooshed together and tied, and like I said to our players afterward, points are on the line every night and we’ve got to try to get points.

“It’s coming down to the last 10 games. We’ve basically got two playoff series. If we can win three out of five, three out of five, basically we’re in the playoffs. We know we’re right in the mix of it. We’ve just got to be confident in that.”

Klee said he was pleased with his team’s effort, but said a familiar bugaboo played a key role in the Frost coming up short.

“We’ve just got to find a way to bury pucks,” Klee said. “We had lots of looks, we had lots of chances. I liked our game, I loved our jump. We’ve just got to find a way to finish.

“We had the 1-0 lead, and obviously we’d like to try to make it 2 and 3 if we can. But they’re a good team. They play hard, and you know it’s going to be tight.”

Frost center Taylor Heise gave credit to the Sceptres for limiting their scoring chances while agreeing with Klee that they got enough good looks to produce a different outcome.

“I think our rushes — I don’t think we got any many to-on-ones and three-on-twos as we wanted,” Heise said. “That’s what can happen when you get the puck up quick, but they did a good job of getting back.

“At the end of the day you have to put the puck in the net. That’s what we get paid to do, so we’re just going to have to figure it out.”

Toronto defender Savannah Harmon said the key to shutting down the Frost’s offense was staying aggressive. “Making hard plays and not sitting back,” she said. “When we had the lead, to just keep playing our style.”

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The Frost scored the only goal in the first period. Dominque Petrie intercepted a pass behind the Toronto net and made a quick pass out front to Michela Cava, who beat Sceptres goaltender Kristen Campbell from in tight for her eighth goal of the season.

The Frost’s Brooke McQuigge was given a five-minute penalty and game misconduct at 7:49 of the second period for a hit to the head. The Frost were 52 seconds from killing off the penalty when Toronto’s Emma Maltais beat Maddie Rooney on a wrist shot from the slot to tie the game.

The game-winner came at 7:13 of the third period, with Jesse Compher scoring on a rebound. The Frost had one great chance to tie the game in the closing seconds after pulling their goaltender, but Claire Thompson’s screen shot from the point banged off the post.

FORT MYERS, Florida — At the very beginning of his major league career, everything was going Brooks Lee’s way. Lee, who was a top prospect at the time, began his career with 11 hits in his first six games after debuting on July 3. He was cruising.

And then, he wasn’t.

“We’re all going to fail in this game and I happened to fail after being on top of the world for like two weeks,” Lee said. “It sucked.”

Pitchers started using more of the zone and he started chasing. Eventually, he developed shoulder soreness which robbed him of most of August. His numbers plummeted and he finished the year hitting .221 with a .585 OPS in 50 games played.

Now, Lee, who went 0 for 3 in the Twins’ 5-1 Grapefruit League loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday, is looking to show the Twins what he can do as he fights for an roster spot this spring.

“Those first two weeks, I think everyone knows what I’m capable of,” Lee said. “It’s not a standard, but I hold myself up to that competition, that level. I would like to do that again, sustain it for a season, a whole career, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Lee prepared at shortstop, second base and third base this offseason. With Carlos Correa at shortstop and Royce Lewis at third, Lee could be an option for the Twins at second base, both now and in the long-term.

The Twins selected Lee eighth overall out of the in the 2022 draft, and at the time he debuted, he was among the best prospects in baseball. Though he had a difficult introduction to the majors, there’s still plenty of belief in Lee as a big piece of the Twins’ future.

Lee, a switch hitter, said he spent the offseason working on his swing mechanics, saying he had “always hit differently” than he did last year so he was seeking to get back to that.

“My hands are relatively in the same area but just the way that they go back in my swing and they load is the biggest difference,” he said. “My hands would raise pretty high and I have always had a flat bat path but when they get too high, then I don’t enter the zone very efficient and I could only hit a few pitches.”

Lee noted that him chasing too much — he had a 35.8 percent chase rate, per Statcast — was a result of a bad swing and “just trying to get hits too hard.” With his mechanical tweaks in place, he said he believes he is now better equipped to impact the ball.

“Going out there and having quality at-bats and controlling the zone is going to be really important for him, something that challenged him during the season last year and something that is part of his focus going into this year,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think that doing it in spring training games, that’s all he can do right now.”

A spot on the team isn’t guaranteed, but the opening that the Twins have at second base could be his for the taking. Edouard Julien is also in the mix there and Willi Castro will see at-bats at second.

But Lee’s focus, instead of a roster battle, is just on getting better every day. And if he does, that will lead him where he wants to be.

“I really wouldn’t view it too much as competition,” Lee said. “If we all get better at what we’re doing, then it’s great to be a better team, and that’s what matters.”

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