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Police Chief Otoniel Reyes at Wednesday’s briefing: “We have no reason to believe it was Covid.”
A 31-year-old New Haven man held in the local police department’s lockup facility died early Wednesday morning after city detention officers found him unresponsive in his cell.
The police chief and mayor said the death is under investigation, and that they do not believe that Covid-19 had anything to do with the untimely death.
New Haven Police Department spokesperson Capt. Anthony Duff sent out an email press release about the death of Desohn Wilson Wednesday afternoon.
Duff wrote that, just before 2 a.m. Wednesday, Wilson arrived at the pre-trial detention facility at 1 Union Ave. City police had arrested him on domestic violence charges, and he was due to be transferred to court later Wednesday morning.
“Around 2:45 a.m., New Haven Police detention officers found Wilson unresponsive in his cell and immediately summoned emergency medical assistance,” Duff wrote. “An ambulance transported Wilson to the hospital where he was pronounced deceased a short time later.”
He wrote that NHPD Major Crimes detectives and NHPD Bureau of Identification forensic detectives responded to the detention facility early Wednesday morning.
“While the death is believed to be non-criminal, the investigation is ongoing and the cause of death ruling is dependent upon a finding by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.”
During Mayor Justin Elicker’s daily online coronavirus-related press briefing Thursday, Elicker and city Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said that they have no reason to believe at this time that Wilson’s death was caused by the novel coronavirus.
Local, state, and national decarceration activists have called on elected officials to order the mass release of inmates detained in jails and prisons where social distancing is difficult if not impossible to achieve, and where the coronavirus can spread rapidly amongst inmates and staff.
“There will be a post-mortem done on the individual,” Reyes said. “There is no reason for Covid to be a concern” in this case.
Elicker pressed that the city police department’s assessment of potential cause of death right now is that this had nothing to do with Covid.
“We do not suspect that Covid has anything to do with it,” Reyes said. “I just don’t want to comment definitively one way or another” until the post-mortem and investigation is complete.
“We have no reason to believe it was Covid.”
Reyes said that the 1 Union Ave. lockup has been averaging three to four inmates a day over the past several weeks since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. The police department and city Health Department worked to reduce the number of detainees held at New Haven’s lockup in mid-March in an attempt to reduce the likelihood of community spread in case an inmate or staff member did contract Covid.
