A top aide to Miami’s mayor and former TV news reporter has been charged with groping a teenager at City Hall and sending him a photo of a penis, police said.
Rene Pedrosa, who resigned Tuesday as Mayor Francis Suarez’s director of communications, reached out to the victim in November after connecting with him earlier on Instagram, according to an arrest report obtained Friday by The Post.
Pedrosa, 48, then invited the victim – identified as a 16-year-old boy by the Miami Herald – to his City Hall office for an interview about designing a web page.
The mayor’s aide proceeded to touch the teen’s hair and grope his buttocks before kissing him on the lips, police said.
“The defendant then grabbed the victim’s hand and placed it on the defendant’s erect penis,” the arrest affidavit states, adding that the victim had been “very uncomfortable” during the alleged Nov. 25 encounter.
Police said the teen managed to “pull away” from Pedrosa, who contacted the victim days later on WhatsApp and asked him for a photo. The boy complied, prompting Pedrosa to send a picture of a man exposing his penis in a bathtub, police said.
It isn’t clear whether the photo was of Pedrosa’s penis but officers said they found the same photo during a search of Pedrosa’s home on Jan. 28.
The bathroom in the photo also matched Pedrosa’s bathroom, police said.
Several text messages sent between the pair were also found during a search of Pedrosa’s electronic devices, police said.
“[I’m] dying to sleep with you,” Pedrosa wrote in one message, according to the affidavit.
In others, Pedrosa told the teen that he was “home” by himself and invited the boy to join him.
“Rene, I cant do that,” the teen replied in one text message, police said. “Also knowing Im a minor just made me [sic] even worse so yeah.”
Pedrosa, who was arrested Friday, is facing felony charges of battery, transmitting pornography to a minor, promoting the sexual performance of a child and computer pornography. He was being held on $26,500 bond, jail records show.
Earlier Friday, Saurez said in a statement to The Post that he had been notified that Pedrosa was in police custody.
Rene PedrosaTwitter“I want to thank the Miami Police Department for expeditiously dealing with this matter,” the statement read.
“The residents of Miami deserve the highest standards from municipal employees. I will always work to ensure that my administration delivers accountability and takes action to uphold those standards. My thoughts are with the reported victim and the family and we expect the legal process to take its course.”
Pedrosa resigned Tuesday from his post after Suarez said he admitted that he was being investigated for “personal misconduct,” the Herald reported.
Pedrosa, who could not be reached early Friday, refused to respond to the allegations on Wednesday, according to the newspaper.
Miami Police Chief Jorge R. Colina is expected to hold a news conference at 1 p.m. Friday to announce a “high-profile” arrest, police said.
Prior to joining Suarez’s staff in January 2019, Pedrosa worked for years as a news reporter at América TeVé-Channel 41, a Spanish station where he specialized in stories on local government and court reporting.
