Pair arrested after emerging from manhole near hotel where Netanyahu stays, police say

By John Miller, CNN

(CNN) — A citywide manhunt led to the arrest of two suspects who New York City police say emerged from a manhole just outside a hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regularly stays during the UN General Assembly.

The suspects’ trip into New York’s underground predawn Wednesday appears to have nothing to do with targeting the hotel, where Netanyahu was expected to stay the next day, police said. It’s instead part of a citywide crime pattern of individuals going into the sewers, looking for valuables and scrap metal that are swept into the system, police said.

Two Queens men, Kevin Rodriguez, 26, and Samuel Reveron, 25, were charged with criminal trespass. They were released on Friday morning after an arraignment in Manhattan criminal court.

Brian Kennedy, an attorney for Reveron, denied any connection between his client’s alleged conduct and the United Nations or any international government officials. It’s “entirely plausible” that someone might go into the sewers looking for valuables, Kennedy told CNN. “Desperation leads to great efforts.”

CNN has reached out to Rodriguez’s attorney for comment.

Because of the heightened security around the UN General Assembly and the proximity of the underground incursion to a highly sensitive location, authorities prioritized identifying the individuals and determining why they were beneath the hotel in the pipes and tunnels of the city’s sewer system.

The NYPD and US Secret Service reviewed videos, license plate readers and other tools to try and identify the intruders, officials said.

The investigation involved the use of a combination of modern police technology and old-fashioned shoe leather, according to law enforcement officials.

Detectives pulled video from the major case unit going door-to-door along Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, where witnesses said three men were seen getting into a pair of vehicles just after 4 a.m.

When a picture of the license plate of one of the cars was developed, it was entered into the NYPD license plate reader system. The system gave detectives a pattern of the car’s travels, including when it arrived and when it departed the Park Avenue location. It also allowed detectives to learn the registered owner and to pull body cam video of him from prior car stops for traffic violations.

Detectives went to the location where the vehicle was registered and staked out the car until the suspect approached the vehicle and was taken into custody. It is not clear whether the two suspects were arrested together or separately. Additional suspects are being sought.

The arrests fit into a pattern of incursions into the city’s sewer and underground tunnels over the past few months, where citizens have taken cell phone video of people going into manhole covers or coming out of them during predawn hours wearing hip waders and boots. Detectives say in a number of cases where arrests were made the suspects made statements that they were just looking for valuables, including gold chains, rings, or other metals such as copper that can be resold.

In the end, a case that set off alarm bells to the NYPD and the US Secret Service about national security, and the potential for foreign agents or terrorists, ended with some high-end detective work leading to an unglamorous motive.

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CNN’s Lauren del Valle contributed to this story.