Stabbing Suspect Dies at 88th Precinct
A 39-year-old homeless man arrested Thursday for stabbing a woman on a Fort Greene street died in police custody early Friday of an apparent seizure in an 88th Precinct holding pen, police said.
Police arrested the man at 3:56 a.m. Thursday after he allegedly stabbed a 48-year-old woman in her lower right leg with a blade from a Leatherman-style multi-purpose tool during an argument on the street at the corner of Myrtle and Carlton Avenues.
Emergency Medical Services took the man to Woodhull Medical Center at 4:26 a.m. for treatment of “minor injuries,” according to the Fire Department press office. He was released the next day and taken to the precinct stationhouse at 5:27 a.m.
Later Friday morning, officers saw the man having an apparent seizure in the stationhouse holding pen and summoned Emergency Medical Services medics, who pronounced him dead.
A police spokesman could not provide the time of death.
The Medical Examiner’s office will release the cause of death after an autopsy.
Police would not disclose the man’s name, pending family notification, according to an NYPD spokesman.
Locals said his name was Angel. A clerk at a nearby deli on Carlton Avenue said that Angel had a history of alcoholism and drug abuse, and that he had caught him trying to steal from his store on four separate occasions but did not report the incidents to police.
Typically, when someone dies in police custody, the NYPD Internal Affairs office conducts an investigation in which a team visits the precinct stationhouse and interviews other prisoners and officers about the circumstances prior to the death, according to a police source. The team also consults the Medical Examiner’s office about the cause of death, the source said.
An FDNY spokesman said the stabbed woman was taken to the Brooklyn Hospital Center at 3:34 a.m. Thursday for treatment and then released. Neither the FDNY nor the NYPD could provide the woman’s name.
Police were unable to say what relationship, if any, existed between the man and the woman prior to the stabbing.
Stay with The Nabe for updates on this story.