Cops are investigating the death of a 29-year-old man after he was in police custody at a Manhattan precinct, police said Tuesday.

Musa Cetin was awaiting charges at the Midtown South Precinct on W. 35th St. near Ninth Ave. on Friday when he was found unresponsive in his cell.

Police told the Daily News that Cetin had been stopped while operating a pedicab earlier that day in the Midtown South Precinct for violating unspecified vehicle and traffic laws and taken into custody, and was found to have an open warrant and past vehicle and traffic violations.

Officers checked on Cetin in a holding cell around 8:19 p.m., when he was said to be fine. But when officers checked on him again roughly 14 minutes later around 8:33 p.m., they discovered him unconscious and unresponsive, cops said.

Officers called in EMS and attempted lifesaving measures on Cetin before transporting him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in critical condition. Cetin died Sunday.

A police source told The News that Cetin hung himself with his jacket. It was unclear if, at the time, he was in the cell alone or with others. The NYPD’s Force Investigation Division is investigating the incident.

According to The New York Times, Cetin was born in Turkey. The Times reported that police told family members Cetin had hanged himself in the cell, according to a law enforcement source, but that some family members and friends were skeptical of that.

The city medical examiner is working to determine Cetin’s cause of death.

He lived in Homecrest, Brooklyn, cops said.

Cetin had pending summonses in Manhattan Criminal Court, all for operating a pedicab without a license.

Brian Ehrenpreis, trial attorney at New York County Defender Services, in a statement, condemned the loss of his former client in custody.

“Mr. Cetin was a kind and gregarious young man with an incredible sense of humor, and his loss is profound,” Ehrenpreis said. “He is the second client that I have personally represented to die in the custody of the NYPD or the NYC Department of Correction this year, the first being Ibrahim Diallo, who died in March while awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. An arrest or detention in New York City should never be a death sentence. The failure of the city to provide adequate care to those they detain is unconscionable and demands immediate action.”

The incident comes as, around just two hours after Cetin was found unconscious in police custody Friday, another man, Christopher Nieves, 46, was found dead by officers in a holding cell at Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse on Schermerhorn St. in downtown Brooklyn at 10:15 p.m.

The defendant may have died from a preexisting medical condition, according to a police source with knowledge of the case.

Nieves had been awaiting arraignment on a criminal charge, police said, but they did not disclose what he had been arrested for.

According to the Legal Aid Society, Nieves was accused of shoplifting food from a grocery store.

“This tragic loss represents the 12th person to die in city custody or shortly after being released and the third person to pass away at a local courthouse this year alone,” a Legal Aid Society spokesman said of the Brooklyn incident. “The NYPD’s drive to criminalize poverty has led to the avoidable and unnecessary incarceration and death of a man who was accused of shoplifting food from a grocery store. Instead of receiving the care he urgently needed, he languished and died in a holding cell.”

Nieves’ cause of death is being investigated by the city medical examiner’s office.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/09/02/nypd-probing-pedicab-drivers-death-after-police-custody/