Russia is investigating the death of an employee of its New York consulate in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Authorities were notified shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday of an unconscious male at the Russian Embassy in Manhattan, and paramedics soon after declared him dead at the scene, the New York Daily News reported.
The man has been identified so far only as a 63-year-old Russian native who lived in Manhattan and worked at Moscow’s consulate on E. 91st Street near Fifth Avenue, Daily News reported.
“Police are here and they are investigating. So far we are not commenting,” a consulate official told the newspaper Tuesday.
The New York Police Department said the victim was found unconscious and unresponsive with unidentified trauma to the head, with consular staff telling the BBC the employee died of cardiac arrest.
“Medics are currently establishing the cause of his death, but it is believed that the man suffered a heart attack,” Nikolai Lakhonin, a spokesman for Russia’s U.S. Embassy, told the TASS news agency.
The man’s death “doesn’t appear to be the result of criminality,” the NYPD said in a statement, though the exact cause of death be determined later by a medical examiner.
“An American physician that was admitted to the Consulate’s building clearly ruled out signs of a violent death,” the Consulate General of Russia in New York said on Facebook.
