Two young asylum seekers recently arrived in New York died of apparent overdoses inside a car parked in front of a mega migrant shelter in Brooklyn.
According to New York police, the unidentified victims were 24- and 25-year-old men and were found shortly after 8:30 a.m. Thursday inside a parked Nissan Sentra at Scott and Flushing avenues outside of The Jefferson, a six-story commercial building that opened in March to handle the immigration crisis.
The 25-year-old man died at the scene and the 24-year-old was rushed to Woodhall Hospital, but did not survive. Drug paraphernalia was discovered inside the car, according to police sources.
The city medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death. The nationality of the two deceased, who arrived in New York City in December, is unknown, sources told the New York Post.
The building at 455 Jefferson Street is one of two massive Emergency Humanitarian Aid and Response Centers that have opened in recent months to help manage the influx of immigrants who have crossed the southern border. The other was in the vacant Candler Tower office building in Times Square.
“We were saddened to learn of the tragic death this week of two asylum seekers who were found outside a facility in Brooklyn where the city provides shelter for migrants,” a City Council spokesperson said. “The NYPD is investigating this incident.”
In December, a 26-year-old immigrant recently arrived in New York took his own life at a shelter in Queens. It was the second case after the suicide in September of a 32-year-old Colombian immigrant who was waiting for asylum living with her two children, in another shelter in Queens.
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