At a press conference on Tuesday, New York City Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and NYPD Chief of Detectives James W.
Essig, announced that NYPD detectives had arrested the remaining suspect in a series of drugging’s and bar robberies. The string of drug-facilitated robberies of men who visited gay bars in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood had resulted in two deaths, and had the city’s LGBTQ community on edge for months.
Sewell thanked NYPD detectives and department personnel along with the Bragg’s office for their assistance in investigation that ran 11 months from Sept.
19, 2021, to Aug. 28, 2022. Essig recounted that his detectives worked on solving the string of 17 similar incidents noting that the victims were offered drugs or marijuana that had been laced, after which the suspects were able to gain access to the victim’s phones and then transfer money from them into accounts under the control of the perpetrators.