It's a sad and shocking end for a man held on Rikers Island for three years—never facing trial, for a crime he didn't commit. A bit more than two years after he walked out of jail, Kalief Browder took his own life. NY1's Josh Robin filed this report.

Khalief Browder was a double victim.

First the criminal justice system and then, says a journalist who exposed his case, the public health system.

"The demons that he was up against were formidable," says journalist Jennifer Gonnerman.

His story emerged in this New Yorker magazine article from October. In 2010, aged sixteen, Browder was arrested in the Bronx, accused of swiping a backpack.

He insisted he didn't do it. By the time he finally cleared his name, he was twenty years old.

"Mostly all of them were telling me to take it and go home, but I didn't do it. And I'm not going to say I did that. I didn't do it," Browder says.

During that time, Browder was beaten—which can be seen in a video. He was also held in solitary confinement for more than 1,000 days.

Browder had been suing the city. The Bronx district attorney declined to comment on his death. The de Blasio administration says it's reforming Rikers, ending solitary confinement for 16 and 17-year-olds.

"And a lot of the changes that we are making at Rikers Island right now are the result of the example of Khalief Browder. So I wish—I deeply wish—we hadn't lost him, but he did not die in vain," de Blasio said Monday.

Rikers is also the subject of a class-action lawsuit, joined by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. 

Gonnerman says problems in jail and courts are but one reason Browder took his life. His mental care in public hospitals is another.

"There was one point over Christmas this past year, for eight days he disappeared.  And his lawyer and I were on the phone, three- four times a day trying to find him. It turns out he was at Harlem Hospital, but nobody told his family," Gonnerman says.

Browder had been getting good grades at Bronx Community College, but neighbors say they saw Kalief recently appearing disturbed. 

"Right before he ended up killing himself he was telling his mother—I parked my car right in front of him and he was telling his mother how nobody loves him," one neighbor says.

In a statement,  Browder's family says: "We ask that the mayor and every public official in New York City take every action possible to  ensure that no other person in New York City will ever again be forced to live through all that Kalief endured."