According to disturbing new reports, police in Mount Vernon, New York found Raynette Turner dead in her cell on Monday morning.
She is the fifth black woman, at least, to die behind bars this month.
The 43-year-old, who was a mother to eight children, was arrested on 25 July on suspicion of shoplifting at a restaurant supply store.
Two days later, while waiting to be read her charges in court, she died.
Mayor Ernest Davis has since explained that Turner’s medical history included hypertension and bariatric surgery. However no official cause of death has been determined.
Raynette’s death comes just two weeks after Chicago civil rights advocate Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead of asphyxiation in a Texas jail cell.
Officials have claimed that her death was a suicide, but many slammed the ruling after video of her arrest — which was made public last week — exposed a violent altercation between her and the arresting officer.
And, even more disturbingly, Sandra and Raynette are not alone.
Three other black women have died in police custody since 13th July 2015 - that's five deaths in under a month.
The day after Sandra Bland was found hanging in her cell, 18-year-old Kindra Chapman committed suicide in an Alabama prison. She had been arrested for stealing a cell phone.
On 24th July, Joyce Curnell was arrested on shoplifting charges and found dead in her cell.
And, on 26th July, officers found Ralkina Jones dead in the Cleveland Heights City Jail, two days after she was arrested for a physical dispute with her husband.
These tragic deaths have shined an even brighter spotlight on the plight of black women in the criminal justice system.
As MIC.com explain: “[Sandra] Bland was pulled over for failing to use her turn signal in Texas. But her being pulled over at all falls into a bigger national pattern: In 2013, for instance, more than 53% of all women stopped by the New York City police in 2013 were black.
“Black people overall make up just 27% of the city's population.”
They revealed that black women are three times more likely to be jailed than white women in the USA, and that black women are among the least likely to die via suicide in prison.
“The lives of these five women can never be fully explained using a set of dispassionate statistics, facts and figures,” finishes MIC.com powerfully.
“But the ways their experiences fit into broader disparities that affect black women are telling.
“They prove the United States has a much bigger problem on its hands than these individual deaths.”