The 25-year-old was in NYPD custody in a holding cell at the 100 Centre St. courthouse about 6 a.m. Friday when cops discovered he was having a seizure, police officials said.

While medics were on their way, the man went into cardiac arrest and was given CPR. The medics rushed him to New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, but his condition worsened and he died later Friday, police said.

The NYPD Force Investigation Division was investigating, and cops could not immediately say why the man was first arrested. His name was not released.

The death was also being looked into by the New York Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation, a source familiar with the matter said.

Guardian Angel Kimberly Torres filed a harassment complaint against the 22-year-old man, who was surrounded and strong-armed to the ground during a live Fox News interview focusing on the city’s migrant crisis that Sean Hannity conducted with Sliwa this week.

In a video released Friday on X, Torres, who identifies herself as a Mexican, a mother and a Muslim, said she was trying to “deescalate the situation” when the Bronxite shoved her.

“He was aggressive, very angry,” Torres explained, getting emotional at times during the video, which she recorded in both English and Spanish. “He took his hands with all his might and all his force pushed me. I went back. At that point, the Guardian Angels saw me hurt. They came to my defense.”

Torres, who wears a Muslim headscarf under her red Guardian Angels beret, is behind Sliwa during the segment and can be seen confronting the pedestrian before the takedown.

https://x.com/CurtisSliwa/status/1755787779538051296

As the altercation was filmed, Sliwa identified the man as a “migrant” and a “shoplifter,” although neither were true.

“Our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner — 42nd [St.] and Seventh [Ave.],” The 2021 GOP mayoral candidate said. “Let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He’s sucking concrete.”

The 22-year-old eventually received a summons for disorderly conduct.

Surveillance video contradicted what Sliwa said. The man the Angels roughed up “may have been a little bit drunk, but he was just trying to make his way down Seventh Ave. when Sliwa’s goons stopped him,” a police source with knowledge of the case said. “He tried to push past them and they strong-arm him to the ground,”

A high-ranking NYPD police official said Torres was recorded on body worn camera saying she didn’t want to file a complaint right after the incident, although she has every right to change her mind and file a complaint at a later date.

It was not immediately clear if the man was facing harassment charges Friday.

Police were continuing to painstakingly investigate every aspect of the incident, from the man and the Guardian Angels’ actions to steps taken by responding officers, the police official said.

“It’s a very thorough investigation,” the source said.

Facing a torrent of controversy over his flippant flub, Sliwa gave a half-hearted apology over calling the man a migrant.

“I apologize for miss characterizing the man’s citizenship status, misunderstanding what had caused Guardian Angels to step in,” Sliwa said on X Friday. “The organization and its members would not stand by when someone has hurt a woman, while creating an unsafe situation for all.”

Feb. 9, 2024: Prime time vigilantes

Sliwa, a conservative talk radio staple, has courted controversy throughout his time in the limelight.

In 1992, he admitted to having faked several crimes years earlier, including his own kidnapping, to gain publicity and spotlight dangers in the subway system.

This week’s incident added fuel to already high tensions in New York City as officials struggle to handle an ongoing rise in migrant arrivals for more than a year.

A group of migrants attacked two NYPD officers outside a shelter in Times Square on Jan. 27, sparking outrage.

There’s also been heated debate over the city’s shelter and benefits policies for the new arrivals. A growing number of progressives have voiced concern over the prospect of anti-migrant bigotry sweeping the city.

The Guardian Angels, which Sliwa launched in the 1970s to fight rampant subway crime, have long had a tense relationship with police.

City progressives have called for the tables to be turned on the Angels, with some saying they committed a hate crime, but Sliwa rejected the suggestion Friday.

“No Guardian Angel, a majority minority organization, would ever have provoked an attack based on who someone is or where they came from,” he said. “They responded to a man intentionally being disruptive, aggressive towards film crew members, the crowd and unfortunately put his hands on a female.”

James Hardy was arrested on Thursday and hit with murder, manslaughter and other charges for shooting Thomas Washington near W. 175th St. and Macombs Road in Morris Heights, cops said.

Washington’s fiancée, Kisha Davis, was overjoyed to learn an arrest was made.

“[The detective] was like, ‘I got good news for you,'” she recalled. “He said, ‘We picked him up. We have him in custody.’ It felt like a big relief just came over me.

“I can’t stop doing this,” Davis said, pointing to a tear rolling down her face.

Washington, 44, was attending the Sept. 2 barbecue at the nearby Galileo Playground with Davis and Davis’ aunt when he was shot in the leg about 11 p.m., cops said.

“It’s crazy because it was so quiet,” she said. “We were sitting outside the park, up against the gate. He said, ‘Let’s go to the store,’ so I was like ‘OK, let’s go.’ I went to turn around and I hear like a pop like a firecracker. I turn and look and I’m like, ‘Who put off a firecracker, what the hell is going on?’ I turn around to him and he’s walking to me [holding his leg].”

“They shot me!” Washington screamed.

“I’m panicking, I’m bugging,” Davis recalled. “The wound is underneath his thigh, and now blood’s coming down the back of his leg. You smelled the gas, I thought it was firecracker powder, but it was gunpowder.”

Medics took the father of three to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died, police said. The bullet had hit an artery and Washington bled to death.

Man Shot Dead In The Bronx

A person of interest was apprehended at the scene, but initially let go, cops said. It was not immediately clear how police connected the shooting to Hardy and if he was the man initially taken into custody.

A motive wasn’t immediately disclosed although Hardy admitted to being at the scene, detectives told Davis.

The annual barbecue where Washington was killed was organized to celebrate a memorial mural showing the names of people who recently died in the neighborhood, both from street violence and natural causes, friends told the Daily News at the time.

“Now they’re gonna put him on the wall,” said one woman who passed by the scene, shaking her head as she walked by.

The mural shows a stone angel on a pedestal flanked by two large gravestones in a cemetery. “Welcome To Da Road,” an inscription above the angel reads.

Several witnesses described the gathering as calm and said they did not hear gunshots or see any fights. Another friend, a 58-year-old man who gave his nickname, Shadow, said people on the block treat each other like family.

“There was nobody that was gonna have animosity towards anyone because everyone that we knew there was part of a family,” he said.

Davis didn’t recognize Hardy’s name when detectives identified him as the killer. Months after the shooting, she still didn’t know what sparked the shooting.

“I want to know why,” she said when asked what she would say if she could speak to Hardy. “We were at a memorial for people that passed away and you do that? You don’t give a f–k, period. Us being grown, they could’ve fought, and got it off his chest, and he would’ve lived to see another day.”

Hardy has a criminal record with 11 arrests. In 2001, he was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of assault in Manhattan, according to state prison records. He was released early in 2005 but was put back in jail for violating his parole and was ultimately freed in 2010, records show.

His arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court for the Sept. 2 shooting was pending Friday.

Washington did a stint in prison as well, but had turned his life around and was working as a dishwasher at a kitchen for a Midtown law firm when he was shot. He and Davis began dating four years ago and got engaged a year before his death.

“He didn’t have an issue with nobody. That’s why it’s so crazy to me,” Davis said. “He went to work Monday to Friday. He would leave at 5:30 a.m. in the morning, he would get off around 4, 4:30 p.m.”

Her fiancé’s death has Davis “all the way broken,” she said.

“It takes everything in me to get up in the morning and do what I have to do,” she said. “This is something that’s really gonna bother me for the rest of my life.”

Charges were pending against the 15-year-old suspect, who allegedly opened fire on a loss prevention officer at a Times Square sporting goods store but hit the tourist instead.

The suspect ran off, and fired twice at police who pursued him on foot Thursday evening through the crowded Crossroads of the World.

Police released surveillance images of the teen on Friday afternoon, and said shell casings from the .45 caliber handgun he used in the Thursday night shoplifting and shooting at JD Sports in Times Square match up with evidence of a Jan. 27 armed robbery in the Bronx and a shooting in Bryant Park on Jan. 25.

But around the time cops issued the images and announced a $13,500 award for information leading to the teen’s capture, he was in custody at a residential address in Yonkers, said police.

“Just like we promised — 24 hours later, he’s locked up and off our streets,” said Police Commissioner Edward Caban.

“He’s considered armed and dangerous,” NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said at a news conference earlier Friday.

“He had no problems firing into a crowd at the store, striking a tourist (and) not shooting at cops once, but shooting them twice.”

The shooter was with two other teenagers inside JD Sports on the corner of W. 42nd St. and Broadway around 7 p.m. Thursday when a female security guard stopped them from leaving the store with items they intended to steal, cops said. Police said the items were either a jacket or some shoes.

The guard took the items from the teens, who according to cops then moved as if they were leaving the store.

But the baby-faced shooter suddenly turned an fired a gun at the guard, said cops.

The bullet missed the security guard but struck a 38-year-old woman from Brazil who was in line to buy a pair of sneakers, said Detective Bureau Assistant Chief Jason Savino.

“I was standing right next to her,” Lone Hanson, 62, a tourist from Denmark, told the Daily News Thursday. “She was just shopping with her girlfriend. I heard a boom and she was shot.”

The woman was hit in the left leg. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

“She was standing there saying, ‘Help, Help,’” said a witness who did not want to be named. “I took her shirt off of her and tied it to her leg.”

“I was asking her if everything was OK and she said she doesn’t speak English,” the woman added.

Meanwhle, the shooter and the other teens ran out of the store toward W. 47th St. Cops nearby grabbed one teen “without incident,” said Savino.

The teen shooter ran into a passageway that runs at sidewalk level between W. 47th and W. 48th Sts. at 1211 Sixth Ave., the home to Fox News studios, Chell said at at news conference Thursday night.

“The perpetrator goes in there, he fires one time at our officer,” Chell said. “Our officer draws his weapon but he cannot fire. There are too many people around.”

The teen kept running and fired a second shot at the officer from under his armpit, Chell said. The officer did not return fire in that situation, again because too many people were present, Chell said.

Chell said police showed “great restraint” in not returning fire at the teen shooter.

“Our uniformed officer was not struck,” Savino said. He added: “That officer was well aware of the danger that firing that gun on a crowded, busy street could potentially inflict.”

Chell said at the earlier press conference Friday: “I gotta tell you — one of those bullets hits our cop last night, it’s a whole different conversation we’re having today.”

“Let’s be clear: The stance of the city’s police department — we don’t care who you are, what your status is. We’re not going to broad brush the whole migrant community as being bad people,” said Chell.

“But we’re not going to put up with this.”

The shooter fled the scene wearing a white T-shirt and white pants.

An intense manhunt that involved collection of video images, witness interviews and ballistic evidence led to “pristine” pictures of the suspect that were made public on Friday afternoon, Savino said — and ultimately to the suspect’s arrest in Yonkers.

The teen was with his mother when he was arrested by Yonkers police and members of the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force, said cops.

The teen lived with his family at the Stratford Arms on W. 70th St. on the Upper West Side — a 10-story building and former SRO with more than 100 units that now houses migrants.

“He’s a very calm kid who went to church with his parents,” said an Ecuadoran shelter resident who said he works as a commercial painter and did not want to give his name.

“He was never any problem. Very tranquilo,” said the Ecuadoran man. He added: “I never saw him with any other kids. I always saw him alone.”

Declyn Lauper, 26, was nabbed minutes after a shooting on W. 112th St. near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. that was reported around 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, police said.

A 24-year-old man was shot in the leg and taken to Mount Sinai Morningside hospital in stable condition.

Lauper possessed a fanny pack that contained the Glock, which had seven bullets in its magazine, said a complaint filed in Manhattan Criminal Court.

The complaint says Lauper possessed the weapon “with intent to use it unlawfully against another.”

Also arrested in the gunfire was Omar Lewin, 24, of Washington Heights. Information about Lewin’s case was not immediately available.

Lauper was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a firearm, and Manhattan prosecutors sought bail of $50,000 cash or $150,000 bond.

But a criminal court judge set lower bail, at $20,000 cash and $100,000 bond.

Lauper’s family posted cash bail, and he walked out of court with his lawyer.

Lauper’s arrest was not the first for the troubled son of the ’80s pop star, who won a Tony Award for writing the music in the Broadway show “Kinky Boots.”

In July 2022, police found Lauper sitting in the driver’s seat of a stolen car, the Daily News reported at the time.

Cops noticed the illegally double-parked 2014 Mercedes-Benz C350 at the corner of W. 140th St. and Broadway in Hamilton Heights. They determined the vehicle was stolen, police said.

Lauper was charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle in that incident.

Lauper, who raps under the name Dex Lauper, lives on the Upper West Side. He is the only child of Cyndi Lauper.

US-ENTERTAINMENT-MUSIC-MTV-AWARD

The shooter was with two other teens inside JD Sports on the corner of W. 42nd St. and Broadway when security started eyeing him around 7 p.m., a store employee told the Daily News.

When the trio tried to leave the store, a guard stopped them at the door. One of the teenagers walked outside, but two stayed.

As the guard talked to the duo, she took a shopping bag one of them was holding. Inside was a coat the teens were trying to steal.

“He was trying to steal and [security] were trailing him,” said JD Sports employee Hewitt Jackson. “They tried to take the bag from him and he pulled a gun and tried to shoot a security guard.”

The security guard ducked and the bullet hit a woman shopping nearby, according to a Danish tourist.

“I was standing right next to her,” Lone Hanson, 62, told The News. “She was just shopping with her girlfriend. I heard a boom and she was shot.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Hanson added. “It’s my first day in New York.”

The woman suffered a gunshot wound to the left leg. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

“She was standing there saying, ‘Help, Help,’” said a witness who did not want to be named. “I took her shirt off of her and tied it to her leg.”

“I was asking her if everything was OK and she said she doesn’t speak English,” the woman added. “She was from Brazil.

Staffers at the store ushered shoppers, including the wounded woman, into the back room while police rushed to the scene.

“I was shocked,” said the witness. “People were running and I started to panic.”

The gunman ran outside, where he met an accomplice who had walked out of the store before the shooting. Also outside was a police officer who ran after the robbers but began to have trouble breathing during the chase.

He was rushed to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell in stable condition, the sources added.

At some point during the chase, one of them fired shots at officers but struck no one, police sources said.

The teens continued running north, leaving behind a trail of clothes at W. 48th St. and Sixth Ave. to W. 51st and Sixth Ave., police sources said.

Cops are still searching for them.

The felony indictment unsealed in Manhattan Supreme Court, handed up by a grand jury on Wednesday, charged four asylum seekers arrested in the wake of the Jan. 27 brawl — Darwin Andres Gomez-Izquiel, Kelvin Servita Arocha, Yorman Reveronm, and Yoherny Brito — with second-degree assault and obstructing governmental administration.

A fifth migrant, Wilson Juarez, was charged with tampering with physical evidence and two counts of third-degree hindering prosecution.

Brito, 24, who’s being held on Rikers Island, was additionally charged with tampering with physical evidence and one count of hindering prosecution. Before the indictments announced Thursday, Brito had been the only suspect charged by a grand jury in the case.

Two of the suspects named in the indictment were not identified by name.

Bragg says the seven people under indictment are among 11 people involved in caught-on-video confrontation outside a migrant shelter in Times Square, on W. 42nd St. near Seventh Ave. That number is down from earlier law enforcement statements that 14 people were believed involved in the incident.

One of the 11 people allegedly involved is 22-year-old Jhoan Boada, who has been charged by prosecutors, but has not been indicted by a grand jury.

Several of the 11 people involved are at large, their whereabouts unknown, authorities say. Among those are two men in the indictment announced Thursday whose names are under seal and three who are unidentified and unindicted.

One of the two men involved in the fight not identified in the indictment was taken into custody after the melee and later released. That suspect allegedly kicked and grabbed one of the officers’ legs.

The other unnamed man in the indictment, who is accused of grabbing an officer, was seen in surveillance footage wearing a jacket Juarez had on when police arrested him later that night, according to court docs.

Bragg said the indictments came after a “painstaking” joint investigation between his office and the NYPD. Prosecutors allege that several suspects changed their clothes after the altercation, making them harder to track down.

Citing a flood of misinformation spreading about the case, Bragg walked reporters through surveillance footage frame-by-frame and refuted claims that federal authorities had arrested four suspects out of state.

Bragg said the Department of Homeland Security notified his office on Tuesday that the people mentioned in news reports as having been arrested in the case in fact had nothing to do with the Times Square incident, and there is otherwise no indication the feds have intercepted anyone involved.

“The level of review was meticulous because it must be,” Bragg said. “The only thing worse than failing to bring perpetrators to justice would be to ensnare innocent people in the criminal justice system.”

The DA and NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said the Jan. 27 fracas came about when two cops told the group to move away from the shelter.

The officers grabbed Brito when he refused their instructions and pushed him against the building. Brito allegedly put up a fight when he was knocked to the sidewalk.

Gomez-Izquiel allegedly then grabbed one of the cops and kicked another one time; Reveron allegedly grabbed, pulled, and threw the two officers to the ground.

Juarez and Arocha didn’t assault either officer, according to court documents — Arocha is accused of kicking one of the cop’s radios, and Juarez allegedly watched from the sidelines and gave Brito his FILA jacket as a disguise. Neither of the officers assaulted was seriously injured.

Cops arrested Gomez-Izquiel, Reveron, Juarez, and Arocha the night of the incident, and all were released under supervision after their arraignments. Brito fled and was arrested by cops on Jan. 31 and has been held at Rikers since Feb. 1 on $15,000 bail.

Prosecutors dropped charges against a 21-year-old initially charged with felony assault, saying they no longer believed he was involved.

The DA came under fire from police unions and right-wing groups when his assistant prosecutors declined to seek bail for all of the initial suspects charged except Brito. Some Republicans and right-leaning elected officials called on Gov. Hochul to remove Bragg from office and for the suspects to be deported.

As Bragg announced the new indictments Wednesday afternoon, a small group of protesters gathered outside waving Trump flags and signs with messages like “Bragg is putting our NYPD in danger” and “All Globalist Puppets have to go.”

Mayor Adams praised Bragg and the Police Department’s “sophisticated” handling of the case. He urged New Yorkers to respect the process and be pleased that authorities don’t endorse vigilantism like Curtis Sliwa but “proper investigation.”

“Throughout the weekend and week, the district attorney kept the NYPD up to date, we communicated several times, and he was clear on the complexity of apprehending the individuals involved, and he wanted to get it right,” the mayor said.

“We are going to pursue anyone that commits a crime — if they are longstanding New Yorkers or if they are new arrivals — and that’s what we’re doing, but in no way should we give any indicator that the overwhelming number of migrants and asylum seekers are [not] law-abiding and … pursuing the American Dream.”

Antony Battle, 46, was in the bar at Luxor New York Restaurant on the corner of Tenth Ave. and W. 203rd St. in Inwood on Jan. 27 when he got into an argument with a 33-year-old man over a spilled drink, cops said.

The disagreement boiled over and Battle, of the Bronx, pointed a gun at the victim and fired several times.

The man was shot once in the abdomen. He survived the bizarre attack.

Battle took off but was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

He has numerous prior arrests in the city including for drug possession, aggravated harassment and assault.

Battle’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Thursday.

Firefighters hosed down the batteries as they were being taken from Wilson’s E-Scooter Shop on Queens Blvd. near 67th Drive in Forest Hills.

“We had to extinguish them before we removed them,” said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. “Tuesday’s inspection saved lives. A single [battery] took out an entire shopping plaza in the Bronx a few months ago. This location had far, far, beyond that.”

Eighteen people died and 150 were injured in lithium-ion battery fires in New York City in 2023. So far this year, no battery blaze fatalities have been reported.

Wilson’s E-Scooter built batteries with cannibalized parts and material from other batteries, the Fire Department said. Officials labeled their hybrid products “Frankenstein” batteries.

More than 60 lithium-ion battery packs, hundreds of individual lithium-ion cells, and dozens of electric and gas scooters were found in the shop, Kavanagh said.

Wilson’s E-Scooter was closed Thursday morning after being hit with a raft of FDNY code violations and summonses for breaking the City Council’s recently enacted laws regarding the proper storage of lithium-ion batteries.

“They were making batteries from scratch with individual cells,” FDNY Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn said. “They were taking [lithium-ion] cells and putting them in the pack. It’s very dangerous.”

Lithium-ion batteries must be built by professionals in a space designed for such an industrial operation.

Wilson E-Scooter ended up on the FDNY’s inspection list after the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection flagged the spot.

“Wilson was advertising itself as a battery factory,” Department of Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Vilda Mayuga said.

Wilson’s website is clear about its line of business: “Let’s build a customized lithium-ion battery pack,” it advertises on one page. The site then asks customers to enter the specs for the scooter batteries they want.

“This location was not just repairing batteries but manufacturing their own devices,” Kavanagh added. “They kill people, and they will kill more people if businesses are allowed to operate in this manner.”

Wilson’s also offers to sell batteries it says are made by Panasonic and what it calls “China brand.”

Word of Tuesday’s inspection comes as a lithium-ion battery sparked a massive fire in the basement of a two-story Brooklyn home that injured two firefighters, Flynn said.

The fire on 48th St. near Sixth Ave. in Sunset Park erupted at about 3:30 a.m. and was put out in about an hour. The two firefighters were taken to Maimonides Medical Center for treatment.

The owner of the moped that sparked the fire admitted to firefighters that he had bought the battery “on the street,” Flynn said.

“It is not the original battery that came with the product,” Flynn said. “That’s the message we’ve been driving home — to make sure people use a battery that is UL certified and bought from the manufacturer.”

A worker at Wilson’s E-Scooter was unable to comment on the inspection when reached Thursday.

In November, three generations of a Brooklyn family died in a blaze sparked by a faulty lithium-ion battery. Albertha West, 81, her son Michael West, 58, and her grandson Jamiyl West, 33, all died when the fast-moving fire tore through their Crown Heights home.

Hotel staff discovered the woman unconscious with trauma to her face in an 11th-floor room at the SoHo 54 Hotel on Watts St. near Sixth Ave. at around 10:30 a.m., cops and sources said.

Medics called to the hotel declared the woman dead on the scene.

Police investigating the hotel room found no signs of forced entry, but discovered a bloody iron near her body. The death is being treated as a murder, said police sources.

The woman has an address in Queens and has no criminal record, police sources said.

A woman staying in the room next-door recalled a chaotic scene at the hotel, which she said is packed with people attending upcoming New York Fashion Week events.

“The manager was banging and screaming, ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?'” Victoria Marinucci recalled. “Then there were detectives everywhere.”

“It was really scary,” added Marinucci, who is in town from Los Angeles for the major fashion industry event. “We knew that the person didn’t make it.”

The city medical examiner will determine her cause of death.

There were no immediate arrests.