Robert De Niro has played some tough customers in his time as a movie star, but that didn’t stop one person from trying to rob him blind. In the early hours of Monday, police arrested a woman who’d broken into the legendary actor’s Upper East Side Manhattan town house. At the time of her arrest, the burglar was playing with De Niro’s iPad and trying to steal presents from right under his Christmas tree.
The perpetrator, one Shanice Aviles, was already a legend among the NYPD. Classified as a “known burglar,” she has more than 25 arrests to her name, 16 in this year alone for burglary and petty larceny. She added one more to her résumé, thanks in part to officers who had been keeping an eye on her — and who were watching her as she tried to break into two commercial buildings before settling on the townhouse belonging to the star of Raging Bull and Dirty Grandpa.
Officers then followed her to the second floor of De Niro’s town house, catching her red-handed. The actor was upstairs at the time, while his daughter was in a bedroom. Neither had any idea that their home was being burgled.
That afternoon, as she was being led outside the local precinct stationhouse in handcuffs, she pleaded her innocence. “I didn’t murder anybody!” she shouted to reporters. “I didn’t go to Robert De Niro’s house!” She also flashed smiles to the cameras.
Did Aviles have any idea she was trying to swindle Neil McCauley, the deathly serious and accomplished thief from Heat? She may not have, but maybe she’s impressed with herself, in a sense. De Niro will soon be seen as the opposite of a criminal — a former president — in his very first starring role on a TV show.