The woman caught red-handed in Robert De Niro’s $69,000-a-month rented mansion on Dec. 19 says police have no right to press charges and wants a chance to apologize to the Oscar winner.
Shanice Aviles, 30, who has a criminal record as long as De Niro’s IMDb page, told the New York Post in an interview from Riker’s Island that her arrest “felt like a set-up.”
At the time she reportedly broke into the house, De Niro was sleeping upstairs, as was his daughter. He woke up to the sounds of the commotion and came to his living room to see Aviles being arrested.
Through tears, Aviles told the Post, “I love his movies, y’all! My mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, we all watched it.’ She added, “I’d like to apologize to him.”
Aviles also said, ‘I’m being held here for burglary – burglary! I didn’t take any of his stuff. I didn’t have any of his things with me.’
Shanice Aviles, 30, doesn’t understand how she could be charged with burglary when she didn’t take anything
Robert De Niro, 79, photographed in the hours following the burglary
Investigators say Aviles tried to steal presents from under the Goodfellas star’s Christmas tree.
When the police arrived, they found her trying to put presents in a bag and playing on the actor’s iPad.
She was followed by NYPD officers at about 3 a.m. on December 19 when she broke into De Niro’s seven-bedroom townhouse on East 65th Street.
Aviles told the Post that she was coming home from her brother’s home in Long Island City when she noticed a door to the townhouse was ajar, leading her to believe she had been set up by the police.
Police have said there were signs of a break-in and that she entered the building through a cellar door. They also say they tracked Aviles trying to open other doors in the area.
Aviles said of De Niro, “People have said he’s mean, that he’s not a nice guy, but I think he’s a good guy.” He could have made a few phone calls and bailed me out a lot more.”
Shortly after being taken into custody, Aviles told assembled reporters outside the 19th precinct, “I didn’t go to Robert De Niro’s house…I didn’t kill anyone!”
De Niro’s seven-bedroom Upper East Side mansion. He was awakened by the commotion of officers confronting the burglar downstairs
De Niro was sleeping in one of the house’s seven bedrooms (upstairs) when the burglar broke in
Prior to her arrest, Aviles was already on the radar of the NYPD. She was wanted for a series of other burglaries and has been arrested 26 times before, 15 of them this year alone.
According to CBS New York, she was last arrested on Dec. 13 and about a month earlier when she stole $700 from a Catholic church in Astoria.
There was an outstanding warrant against Aviles after she skipped a court-ordered rehab earlier in December. After being arrested for the De Niro burglary, she was held on burglary charges with $40,000 bail.
Aviles said she would return to the rehab program if given the chance.
She was caught because police followed her in the early hours of the morning and witnessed her making numerous attempts to enter commercial buildings in the area.
According to police, she was seen trying a few doors before slipping around a corner. By the time the officers caught up with her, they noticed a mansion door was open.
Shanice Aviles smiled as she was led handcuffed out of a nearby police station after being caught in actor Robert De Niro’s home
Police don’t think Aviles knew she entered the home of the man considered one of the greatest actors of all time.
Aviles was charged with burglary and taken to the Lenox Hill precinct before being taken to Manhattan Criminal Court for arraignment last week.
De Niro divorced his second wife Grace Hightower in 2021. The pair share an 11-year-old daughter.
De Niro, who grew up in Manhattan, sold the West Village townhouse where he had lived for 37 years in 2012 for $9.5 million. During the pandemic, he moved into one of his homes in upstate New York.
Stan Rosenfield, a public relations representative for De Niro, issued a brief statement indicating that the actor would not comment on the robbery.
“We are not commenting on the robbery of Robert De Niro’s temporary rental home at this time,” Rosenfield said.
Manhattan’s tourist districts have increasingly become breeding grounds for crime – where brazen thieves leave shopkeepers powerless
Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged newly elected Governor Kathy Hochul to halt bail reforms fueling the city’s crime epidemic.
Hochul inherited New York’s governorship from Andrew Cuomo last year. She was re-elected by a smaller-than-expected margin in Tuesday’s by-session and has been widely praised for her soft stance on crime and bail reform.
The bail reforms enacted in 2019 end cash bonds in most cases, a prescient idea that has resulted in many criminals being released back onto the streets within hours of being caught.
“This catch, repeat, release system just destroys the very foundation of our country. And that’s why we’re losing this election,” he said Morning Joe from MSNBC last month.
Six out of 10 New Yorkers in the Hispanic and Asian community voted Democrat compared to seven to eight out of 10 last time. We lose the black and brown base who really believe in those base things. Public safety, housing, education,” the former agent said.
“We can’t talk our way out of this. We have to be realistic about what people encounter on the street.
“We need to get back to Albany…too many people in Albany have dug in and say, ‘If we turn this small number of offenders and go after them, we’re giving up on a reform I advocated for.’
“Not recalibrating is a big mistake because there are too many people… who are repeat offenders. They have decided that they will be violent in our streets, and the unpredictability of their behavior is real…”