A recidivist burglar with more than two dozen prior arrests has been arrested for allegedly breaking into Robert De Niro’s Upper East Side home and snatching up all the presents around his Christmas tree while he was home, according to two senior police officials with direct knowledge of the investigation.
The 30-year-old woman, identified by the officials as Shanice Aviles, was spotted going down a stairwell that leads to a lower-level townhouse entrance on East 65th Street early Monday, they said. She didn’t resurface — and senior police officials say the NYPD’s 19th Precinct Public Safety team next saw her by the Christmas tree, taking the presents.
That’s when the officials say De Niro came downstairs in a bathrobe. The 79-year-old wasn’t hurt.
Aviles, meanwhile, was taken into custody at the scene.
She has 26 prior arrests, not including Monday’s cuffing, primarily for burglaries. This year alone, Aviles has been arrested 16 times on burglary and petit larceny charges, the senior police officials said. Seven of the burglaries were in the 19th Precinct within a three-week span that started around Thanksgiving, they added.
That’s why the public safety team was tracking her, one senior law enforcement official said. The team was deployed earlier this month specifically by top NYPD brass to stop the rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.
Aviles had also been arrested in Queens, allegedly for burglary, on Black Friday and had also been apprehended on a similar charge in October. They let her out, the police officials say.
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It wasn’t immediately clear if Aviles had an attorney, nor were details on the specific charges to be filed against her in the De Niro case immediately available.
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