NEWPORT, Vt. — A Hartford man who was serving dual federal and state prison sentences following his arrest in a high-profile police raid nearly two years ago died in a Vermont state prison over the weekend.

James Ingerson, 54, was found unresponsive in his cell at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vt., on Saturday and was subsequently pronounced dead at the scene, Vermont Department of Corrections said in a news release on Monday.

The circumstances of Ingerson’s death do not appear suspicious at this time, DOC said.

Ingerson was serving a 24-month concurrent prison sentences for federal conviction for unlawfully possessing a firearm and state convictions of cocaine possession and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to court and prison records.

Ingerson was arrested when a convoy of police vehicles from three towns plus federal law enforcement agents converged at his residence adjacent to White River Valley Family Eye Care and across from Hartford High School in June 2023. Police carted off a bin of seized evidence and an antique rifle.

He was subsequently charged with cocaine possession and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The firearm charge was later transferred to federal court.

In January, Ingerson pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of cocaine possession. In February, he pleaded guilty to the federal firearm charge and received a 24-month sentence.

Leanne Salls, Ingerson’s partner and the mother of their 12-year-old son, said that Ingerson had been hospitalized twice earlier this year in the intensive care unit for pneumonia and a “fungus infection” in one of his lungs.

In an interview with the Valley News on Monday, Salls said that Ingerson had been shuttled among multiple prisons since he was initially taken into custody after the 2023 arrest for violating terms of his release from a prior crime. He had been suffering from a variety of conditions, including “extremely high blood pressure,” a “fully torn rotator cuff” and a “messed up vertebrae,” she said.

The last time she spoke with him, in a 17-minute phone conversation from prison last Wednesday, Salls said Ingerson told her that he was having difficulty breathing.

“I guess they have to walk across the compound to get medication and he would be completely out of breath and have to stop,” Salls said Ingerson told her, recalling he said “it hurts to breathe.”

The DOC news release didn’t state the time that Ingerson was found unresponsive by prison staff.

A DOC spokesperson did not respond to an email on Monday for additional comment.

At sentencing in U.S. District Court in Vermont on Jan. 28, Ingerson had been designated to be transported by federal marshals to the Federal Medical Facility Devens in Devens, Mass., according to federal court records.

In its news release on Monday, Vermont DOC said that Ingerson had been at a federal prison until early February when was returned to Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.

On March 7, he was then transferred to the state’s largest prison in Newport, where he “remained there until his death,” according to DOC.

Less than a month later, on Saturday, a corrections officer found Ingerson “unresponsive in his cell.

The officer notified medical staff and Emergency Medical Services,” who “immediately began initiating life-saving measures. Life-saving measures were unsuccessful, and EMS pronounced Ingerson deceased.”

The DOC investigative unit will review Ingerson’s death, a standard procedure when people die in state custody.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.