The NYPD is investigating the death of a 46-year-old man in a Brooklyn courthouse holding cell, police said Saturday.
The defendant may have died from a preexisting medical condition, according to a police source with knowledge of the case.
Cops and city Department of Correction officers monitoring the cells inside Brooklyn Criminal Court on Schermerhorn St. in downtown Brooklyn found the man dead inside his cell at around 10:15 p.m. Friday.
His name was not immediately released as cops track down family members.
The man had been awaiting arraignment on a criminal charge, police said, but they did not disclose what he had been arrested for.
An autopsy has been scheduled to determine just how the man died.
At the same time, the NYPD’s Force Investigations Division, which is responsible for probing all incidents of death in custody, has launched an investigation, a department spokesman said.
On July 5, 18-year-old Saniyah Cheatham, who had been arrested for an assault, died by suicide inside a holding cell at the 41st Precinct station house, cops said.
She hung herself with her own sweater within two minutes of being put in a holding cell, according a high-ranking police source. Cops performed CPR until EMS rushed her to Lincoln Hospital, but she couldn’t be saved.
The Force Investigation Division is still also looking into that case, but it’s believed everything was handled appropriately, the police source said.
Cheatham’s family members dispute the cops account, and have called for an independent investigation and the release of the surveillance footage from the station house’s holding cells.
