Quebec’s police watchdog agency says it is investigating the death of a 39-year-old woman in police custody after being arrested in the province’s northern Nunavik region.
The Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), which investigates all police intervention and in-custody deaths in the province, said in a statement that the woman died Friday evening at a police station Puvirnituq, a village on Hudson’s Bay.
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Authorities say the woman had been arrested at 5:45 p.m. by local Nunavik Police for violating a municipal bylaw and was brought into police custody.
The BEI release says police found the woman unconscious in a cell shortly after 7 p.m. and she was pronounced dead shortly after.
She is the second woman to die in the custody of Nunavik police this year. In March a 33-year-old woman died in a police station in the village of Akulivik.
Five BEI investigators have bee assigned to the case.