Blakeman: Nassau County jail inmate dies of apparent drug overdose

An inmate at the Nassau County Jail died after suffering "a medical episode," police said Thursday.

The 29-year-old man, identified Friday as Nikita Pertsev of Brooklyn, died of an apparent drug overdose, according to Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

Pertsev fell ill just before 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow, Nassau Police said in a news release.

An ambulance transported Pertsev to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said. The Nassau Homicide Squad is investigating but no other details were immediately released.

In a statement Thursday, Blakeman said an apparent drug overdose caused the man's death.

“We are sorry for the death of one of our inmates who died of an overdose,” he said. “There will be a full and transparent investigation to determine how the contraband got into our correctional facility.”

Nassau County has dealt with drugs in its correctional facility before.

A state Commission of Correction report in 2021 on the death of an inmate at the East Meadow facility after a fentanyl overdose found that jail officials failed to do enough to purge drugs from inmate housing following "a pattern of drug-related contraband" activity, according to a Newsday story.

A separate Newsday story in 2021 reported that jail officials had seized drugs or drug paraphernalia 237 times between 2016 and 2019 including marijuana, prescription pills, heroin and other banned substances.

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.