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 had been 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.
“The callous disregard that law enforcement continues to show towards New Yorkers is deeply shocking,” the Legal Aid Society and Brooklyn Defender Services, two public defense organizations, said in a joint statement on Friday. The groups also called for an “urgent, thorough and independent” investigation into the matter.
Mr. Ramishvili did not have a lawyer because he had not yet been arraigned, Legal Aid said.
The authorities said that a security guard saw Mr. Ramishvili take power tools and other items from the shelves of a Home Depot in the Old Mill Basin neighborhood of Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, hide them under his jacket and walk out without paying. The guard, who noticed Mr. Ramishvili on surveillance footage, said he had stolen goods valued at $213 from the store, according to the authorities. He was also carrying a vessel of cocaine at the time, they said.
Four other people have died this year in city jails or just after being released from custody.
On Thursday, a woman who was being held at the Rikers Island jail complex was pronounced dead after being discovered unresponsive, according to the Department of Correction.
Earlier this month, Ariel Quidone, 20, who had been accused of robbery, died in a hospital after collapsing in his Rikers cell. Two other men who were being held in New York City jails died within the same week last month.
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