Another African-American woman has been found dead in a jail cell, this time in Mount Vernon, New York, according to ABC 7.
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Raynette Turner never did get to see a judge. Turner was found dead on Monday afternoon.
Turner’s initial autopsy was completed Tuesday but more testing is needed to determine her cause of death, officials said. The man who had been married to Turner for 23 years said that everything seems a cover-up and if the police had done their job his wife would still be alive.
“We know she was requesting medical treatment and it seems that, at some level, the system and the protocols that the city was following failed”, he said. She stole a box of crab legs from a Restaurant Depot in Westchester County.
Raynette Turner was arrested on Saturday for allegedly shoplifting, officials say.
Turner was taken to the hospital on Sunday after she said she was not feeling well and was later taken back to the jail. After she went to the hospital she was returned to her cell, but the next day she was found unresponsive. Turner was held over the weekend for the arraignment which was scheduled for Monday. Her cell block had video surveillance, and was checked on the hour.
“No one said anything to me about my wife was downstairs, dead”, he said.
Police officers claim that they believed that Turner was sleeping all Monday morning.
Herman Turner, 49, said he was told the court proceeding was postponed because his wife wasn’t feeling well.
The family is still making funeral arrangements. Soufer said that’s what investigators are now trying to determine.
“This a time for mourning”, his statement continued. Politics aside, I call on all to respect the life of this young woman.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent his Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit to Mount Vernon after Turner’s death was announced on Tuesday.
Turner said he sat in court all day Monday until about 4 p.m. waiting for his wife’s arraignment. “She loved to talk”, he recalled Wednesday.
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Raynette Turner, 42, was under arrest for shoplifting.
