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2 Men Arrested for Uptown Laundry Room Burglaries, Police Say

 Steven Nuñez and Railin Sanchez were arrested in a March 23 incident that fits a larger pattern.
Steven Nuñez and Railin Sanchez were arrested in a March 23 incident that fits a larger pattern.
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DNAinfo

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — Two teens were arrested last week for stealing from a laundry room vending machine amid a spate of similar burglaries Uptown and in The Bronx, police said. 

Steven Nuñez, 19, and Railin Sanchez, 17, were busted on March 23 after a woman witnessed the pair using a crowbar to pry a laundry card vending machine from the wall of her Hillside Avenue building, the Manhattan District Attorney's office said.

After getting caught red-handed, the would-be thieves fled the building through a side exit that led into an alley, where officers from the 34th Precinct arrested them, the criminal complaint said. Police recovered a crowbar, a mask and a pair of gloves during the bust, police said.

Nuñez was later implicated in a similar incident at a building on West 171st Street, officials added.

Surveillance video from that incident shows three men prying the card machine off the laundry room wall around 2:30 a.m. on March 19, the complaint said. A witness from the building later identified Nuñez as one of the suspects, police said.

Both Nuñez and Sanchez were charged with second degree burglary, the criminal complaint said.

Sanchez's lawyer, Eliza Collins, called the charges "unsubstantiated accusations," while Nuñez's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both Nuñez and Sanchez were released on their own recognizance with a curfew requirement, according to the District Attorney's office.

The incidents came amid a burglary pattern in which groups of two to four suspects have been stealing money from more than a dozen laundry card machines in residential buildings.

At a recent meeting of the 34th Precinct Community Council, Deputy Inspector Chris Morello noted that there have been 17 similar incidents in Northern Manhattan and The Bronx involving thieves targeting the VTM machines in laundry rooms. The machines allow users to add cash to a laundry card in increments of $5, $10 or $20.

Eleven of the incidents occurred in the 34th precinct, while the other six incidents were split evenly between the 33rd Precinct, which covers Washington Heights, and the 50th Precinct, which covers Riverdale and Kingsbridge in The Bronx.

“In some of the video we’ve seen, it’s been three or four perpetrators in these crimes,” Morello said. “One person might be a lookout; two people might be using the crowbar to break into the machine.”

The investigation into the burglary pattern is ongoing, he noted, encouraging residents to report any suspicious activity in their buildings.

“While we’re confident that we’ve got two of the individuals who have been doing this…there are other perpetrators out there involved in this crime, so we’re trying to apprehend them too,” he said.