The cause of death was not immediately clear. Four other people have died this year in city jails or just after being released from custody.
The cause of death was not immediately clear. Four other people have died this year in city jails or just after being released from custody.
The cause of death was not immediately clear. Four other people have died this year in city jails or just after being released from custody.
A man accused of stealing power tools from a hardware store died in a holding cell at a Brooklyn courthouse just before his scheduled arraignment on Friday, according to court records and the police.
The man, identified as Soso Ramishvili, 32, was being held in police custody at the Kings County Criminal Courts Building in Downtown Brooklyn. He faced charges of petty larceny and possessing stolen property and cocaine, the authorities said.
After his arrest on Tuesday, Mr. Ramishvili was scheduled for an arraignment on Wednesday morning. But the hearing was postponed several times this week and rescheduled for Friday morning, court records show.
Then, just before Friday’s scheduled appearance, Mr. Ramishvili was discovered unconscious by the police at 8:25 a.m. Emergency medical workers were called to the courthouse and pronounced him dead, the police said.
The cause of Mr. Ramishvili’s death was not immediately clear. But the police said he had been taken to the hospital multiple times after his arrest on Tuesday.
Still, his death has caused outrage among lawyers and public defenders as well as renewed criticism of the treatment of people accused of crimes in New York City.