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When Jameek Lowery started filming inside a New Jersey police station, he was panicked and afraid. As he waited for an ambulance, he told officers that he was paranoid and insisted that they were trying to kill him.

Two videos he streamed live to Facebook on Saturday morning depict a frantic Mr. Lowery, 27, asking viewers for help and calling out to the Paterson, N.J., police officers for water. Then he turned the camera toward himself.

“Ma, I’m sorry,” he said. “They’re going to do this to me. They’re going to kill your baby boy.”

About 10 minutes later, Mr. Lowery, a father of three, was unresponsive. Two days after that, he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

The videos were shared to Facebook on Saturday.

The Passaic County prosecutor is now investigating Mr. Lowery’s death, as protesters continue to press for an explanation of what happened during the time Mr. Lowery was in transit from the police station to the hospital.

“We plan on continuing and increasing our actions until we get justice,” said Zellie Thomas, 34, a teacher and community organizer from Paterson.

On Tuesday, while officials held a public meeting about Mr. Lowery’s death inside Paterson’s City Hall, a rally outside turned chaotic, with participants reporting on social media that the police used pepper spray on protesters.

Mr. Lowery first called 911 at around 2:45 a.m. on Saturday. He told dispatchers he had taken ecstasy and was paranoid, according to the Passaic County prosecutor’s office. An ambulance took him to a nearby hospital, but he left “sometime after becoming erratic,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Then, at around 3:45 a.m., Mr. Lowery called 911 again and said that people were trying to kill him. After making that call, he walked into Paterson’s Police Headquarters asking for assistance. Officers called for an ambulance.

While Mr. Lowery was waiting, he began recording. In the footage on Facebook, officers kept their distance as Mr. Lowery repeated that he believed they were trying to kill him. As he filmed, Mr. Lowery told the officers that he would not harm them.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’m just paranoid.”

“You’ve got to breathe,” one of them responded.

Throughout the videos, which lasted more than five minutes, officers responded by telling Mr. Lowery that they did not want to kill him.

Mr. Lowery is heard repeatedly asking for water, but is told officers are “not allowed” to give him anything; one officer said that he would get water in the ambulance or at the hospital.

He appeared to be sweating profusely, with chapped lips. “All right,” he said to the officers just before the footage ends, “go ahead and kill me.”

Paterson’s mayor, Andre Sayegh, said in a statement that Mr. Lowery walked to the ambulance on his own. The prosecutor’s office said that Mr. Lowery had to be restrained during the mile-long trip and that officers used “physical force and compliance holds to secure him.”

Officials said they are awaiting toxicology and autopsy reports from the medical examiner’s office, and a cause of death had not been determined.

On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters gathered for a march outside City Hall to call attention to Mr. Lowery’s death, according to Mr. Thomas.

But protesters instead headed toward the police station, Mr. Thomas said, and at least one officer used pepper spray on the crowd.

Paterson’s police director, Jerry Speziale, and its police chief, Troy Oswald, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Sayegh’s office declined to comment.

Another rally was planned for Wednesday night.

Follow Michael Gold on Twitter: @migold

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