A man who died in police custody in a Brooklyn courthouse had been released from the hospital two weeks earlier after suffering a blood infection — one of five fatalities of people in NYPD and Correction Department custody since Aug. 23 that are now the subject of a series of external and internal investigations.
Christopher Nieves, 46, was found dead inside a holding cell in Brooklyn Criminal Court by NYPD cops and Department of Correction officers about 10:15 p.m. Aug. 29.
One day earlier, after a shoplifting arrest, he had been hospitalized for withdrawal symptoms, treated at Woodhull Hospital and released to Brooklyn Central Booking. Police sources have said they suspect Nieves died from a preexisting medical condition.
His cause of death has not yet been determined by the city Medical Examiner’s office, which is conducting an autopsy.
Earlier, Nieves, who struggled with drug addiction, was in Bellevue Hospital for over a month as he was treated for the blood infection, believed to be sepsis, according to his sister, Candice Nieves.
“He was really funny. The people that knew him, knew who he really was deep down inside,” she said.
“His past didn’t define him. Any judgments people make about him, they don’t know what Christopher has been through in his life and they don’t realize that he struggled a lot and he had a hard life. He fought everyday to live. Whether that be in a way that people agree with or not, he wanted to live.”
Christopher lived with his niece in his childhood home in Greenpoint.
Fearing that he might die, he was grateful for the opportunity to stay clean while at Bellevue Hospital and was sober when he was released, his sister says. But she worried he may have fallen back into his old habits after his release.
Two weeks after his release, Nieves was arrested for shoplifting food from a grocery store – a minor charge, the Legal Aid Society said.
The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division, which investigates all deaths in police custody, informed the sister that Christopher was taken to Woodhull Hospital for treatment after his arrest, she says. Candice said she wasn’t sure why her brother was taken to the hospital but was later told he was discharged and taken to a holding cell at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
The NYPD is investigating the death of a 46-year-old man in a holding cell at Brooklyn Criminal Court on Schermerhorn St. on Friday. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Two hours prior to Christopher Nieves’ death, another man died while in police custody on Friday inside a Manhattan precinct. Musa Cetin, 29, was awaiting charges inside Manhattan’s Midtown South Precinct stationhouse when he was found unresponsive in his cell.
He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition and died there two days later. A police source told The News Cetin hung himself with his jacket.
Cetin was arrested while operating a pedicab for violating vehicle and traffic laws and then found to have an open warrant, police said.
The city jails, which are overseen by the Department of Correction, also saw a spate of deaths over the past 12 days. On Aug. 23, Ardit Billa died in the George R. Vierno Center, a jail on Rikers Island. The cause of his death remains under investigation but a captain and two officers were suspended in connection with the death.
On Aug 30, Jimmy Avila died by suicide in the West Facility, another Rikers jail, after his arrest a day earlier for fatally shooting a building super.
On Wednesday night, a not-yet-publicly-identified man died also in the Vierno Center.
The state Attorney General’s office, the Board of Correction and other oversight bodies are probing the jail deaths. The Attorney General’s office also conducts reviews of police custody deaths.
With Graham Rayman
