A man getting a “Last Rites” tattoo (above) etched into his arm in a Brooklyn shop yesterday felt dizzy, fainted and fell head-first into a glass display case – slitting his throat and killing him, police said.
The tragic mishap occurred at 2 p.m. while Juaquin Leger, 28, of Brooklyn, was getting the tattoo in the Buzz Tattoo Shop at 61 Graham Ave. in Williamsburg.
Store owner Julio Ramos cried as he described what happened as he began etching the eerily foreboding tattoo on Leger’s right forearm.
“I was doing the linework,” he said. “I insisted that he sit down because he was getting dizzy.”
The tattoo depicts the face of a devil known as a “Last Rites” style among artists.
“He got up and walked to the counter to get some food” that he had brought with him, Ramos said, trembling.
Others in the shop told detectives that Leger said he thought eating would make him feel better, police sources said.
After walking over to the counter, the witnesses reported, Leger blurted out, “Well, I still feel dizzy,” and collapsed, falling head-first into the display case, shattering its glass top.
The broken glass sliced into his neck and throat, leaving deep gashes.
“I spotted him staggering and he fell,” said Ramos. “When he fell into the glass, I seen it was already too late to help him.
“He died right in the middle of the floor,” said Ramos.
Ramos’s apprentice, Wilson Fernandez, described the horrific scene.
“Blood was just pumping out of his mouth and ears,” he said, adding that the gash went fully across Leger’s neck.
A woman ran from the second-floor tattoo parlor into the street and asked a passing cop to come to Leger’s aid, telling him, “Hurry up, he’s bleeding,” police sources said.
Leger was dead on arrival at Woodhull Hospital.
Ramos, 37, who has been a tattoo artist for 20 years, called Leger’s death “a freak accident.”
Police said Ramos did not have a city tattoo license on display in the shop and was not able to produce one. They also said he did not have records of his clients and the work he has done on them, as required by law.
He was given summonses for the two offenses, they said.
Ramos also was arrested on an outstanding warrant for a previous disorderly-conduct arrest and released, court sources said.
But yesterday, he was far more traumatized by the death of his customer.
“I want the family to know that my condolences and my prayers go out to them,” he said.
A spokesman for the city Health Department, which licenses tattoo artists and inspects tattoo parlors when complaints are filed, said the shop would be checked out over the weekend.
Additional reporting by Marsha Kranes