A spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Friday the cause and manner of Nicholas Brown's death have not been determined, and toxicology results are pending.

Officials said Brown, whose last known address was on East Broadway in Stratford, was found sweating profusely and appeared ill during a routine cellblock check at about 9:15 p.m. The man had what appeared to be a seizure after being placed in an ambulance, and went into cardiac arrest en route to Milford Hospital, said Officer Vaughan Dumas, the Police Department spokesman.

Paramedics were unable to revive Brown and he was pronounced dead at 10:21 p.m. in the hospital's emergency department, Dumas said.

Videotapes of the cellblock and booking areas of the city Police Department during the time Brown was in custody have been obtained, City Attorney Marilyn Lipton said.

The incident is the first death in Milford police custody in at least 30 years, officials said. Dumas said he was aware of only one other death — a prisoner who hanged himself in the cellblock — when the police station was downtown. The department moved to the Boston Post Road in the 1970s.

Brown had recently been evicted from the Red Roof Inn on Rowe Avenue, Dumas said. An employee called police at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday to complain the young man was sleeping in his car in the hotel's parking lot and had a pit bull with him.

Officers talked to Brown through the partially opened car window, and asked him to step out and leave the dog inside, Dumas said.

Instead, Brown emerged with the dog on a leash and began to walk away, the spokesman said. The suspect did not immediately comply with officers' request to stop and began to run, Dumas said.

He was "Tasered," or jolted with a 5-second burst of electricity from the nonlethal weapon, the police spokesman said. Brown sat up and pulled the metal probes from the weapon off his skin, Dumas said. When the suspect put his hands into his pockets and refused to remove them, the officers believed that he had a weapon, he said.

They used the Taser again, this time making direct contact with Brown's body, the police spokesman said. Dumas did not know how many volts of electricity the weapon, called an X-26 Air Taser, can deliver. City police own five or six of the devices, and officers who are trained may sign them out to use during their shift, he said.

Before he was taken into custody, Brown put something from his pocket into his mouth, the police spokesman said. He told officers on the scene and later the paramedics that he had ingested two "roaches," or burnt marijuana cigarettes, Dumas said.

The spokesman would not identify the officers who made the arrest or the one who made the required physical checks of prisoners in the cellblock every 15 minutes, citing an ongoing internal investigation.

No action has been taken against any Police Department employee in connection with the incident. "Our preliminary investigation indicates that all department procedures were followed," Dumas said. State's Attorney Kevin Lawlor said the city police would handle the investigation themselves.

Dumas said Brown had several previous addresses, in Stratford, Milford, West Haven and Bridgeport, and that the suspect had a prior arrest record here on drug charges.

Brown had been charged with interfering with police and tampering with evidence in the latest incident and was being held on a $5,000 bond.

The pit bull was taken to the city's animal-control shelter.