A 38-year-old mother died in a Flanders police cell on Thursday morning. Medics had explicitly cleared her for detention just hours earlier.
Plainclothes officers arrested the woman during a targeted house search on Wednesday. Detectives executed this raid as part of a drug investigation.
She was scheduled to face an investigating judge the following morning, Gazet van Antwerpen reports.
Guards checking her holding room at the Neteland police headquarters in Herentals (Antwerp province) discovered her body instead.
"An autopsy and toxicological investigation are taking place," Kato Belmans from the Antwerp public prosecutor's office told the newspaper.
Earlier, the suspect collapsed following her initial interrogation. Paramedics quickly rushed her to a local hospital for emergency observation. However, a supervising doctor approved her transfer back to the detention block later that evening.
Speculation online was attributing the death to an overdose, but relatives staunchly reject this version.
The woman's eldest daughter, Luna, highlighted a severe medical history: surgeons inserted a third stent into the 38-year-old's heart last summer.
Family members suspect a nocturnal heart attack claimed her life in solitary confinement.
"She was barely 17 when I was born," the 21-year-old daughter explained. "However difficult she had it herself, my younger sister and I really came first."
Any fatalities inside law enforcement facilities are treated as highly suspicious. Therefore, justice officials immediately activated a strict protocol, assigning the investigation to a separate police zone to ensure objectivity.
Forensic investigators are now reviewing internal surveillance footage from the station to establish what happened. Originally from Antwerp, Sarah lived in Herentals for many years.
