The 75-year-old manager of a Brooklyn social club died after being taken into police custody after he was handcuffed during a raid yesterday, cops said.
Sam Nastasa, who was running the Banner Civic Social club on 72nd Street in Bensonhurst, went into cardiac arrest during the 1:30 p.m. raid and died a short time later at Lutheran Hospital.
Members of the NYPD organized-crime intelligence division and FBI agents had gone to the club for reasons they would not disclose. They cuffed Nastasa after they saw an electronic gambling device inside, cops said.
The elderly manager had no criminal record in New York going back to 1980, police sources said.
“I am dead inside,” Nastasa’s furious wife, Nina, said. “How can they hurt somebody who lived a perfect life? He didn’t do anything wrong. They had no right to abuse my husband.”
She said her husband, who leaves five adult children, had no history of heart trouble.
” I think the police were very rude and had no consideration,” Nastasa’s daughter Kristie said. “They treated a 75 year-old man as if he were a young kid.”
The family claimed it took an hour for cops to get Nastasa to the hospital.
But an official familiar with the incident said, “Police immediately called for medical assistance.”