Cops are investigating the death of a 29-year-old man after he was in police custody at a Manhattan precinct, police said Tuesday.
Musa Cetin was awaiting charges from an outstanding warrant inside the Midtown South Precinct on W. 35th St. near Ninth Ave. on Friday. Officers checked on Cetin around 8:19 p.m., when he was said to be fine. But when officers checked on him again roughly 14 minutes later around 8:33 p.m., they discovered him unconscious and unresponsive, cops said.
Officers called in EMS and attempted lifesaving measures on Cetin before transporting him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in critical condition.
Cetin later died on Sunday. The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division was investigating the incident.
The city Medical Examiner is working to determine Cetin’s cause of death.
He lived in Homecrest, Brooklyn, cops said.
Cetin had pending summonses in Manhattan Criminal Court, all for operating a pedicab without a license.
The incident comes as, around just two hours after Cetin was found unconscious in police custody Friday, another man, Christopher Nieves, 46, was found dead by officers inside a holding cell at Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse on Schermerhorn St. in downtown Brooklyn at 10:15 p.m.
The defendant may have died from a preexisting medical condition, according to a police source with knowledge of the case.
Nieves had been awaiting arraignment on a criminal charge, police said, but they did not disclose what he had been arrested for.
According to the Legal Aid Society, Nieves was accused of shoplifting food from a grocery store.
“This tragic loss represents the twelfth person to die in City custody or shortly after being released and the third person to pass away at a local courthouse this year alone,” a Legal Aid Society spokesperson said of the Brooklyn incident. “The NYPD’s drive to criminalize poverty has led to the avoidable and unnecessary incarceration and death of a man who was accused of shoplifting food from a grocery store. Instead of receiving the care he urgently needed, he languished and died in a holding cell.”
Nieves’ cause of death is being investigated by the city Medical Examiner’s office
