The migrant man accused of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl at a Queens hotel was found to be innocent — after investigators determined the girl’s parents fabricated the disturbing story in an attempt to get a larger room at the shelter, a senior law enforcement official told The Post Friday.
The 34-year-old man was cut loose after authorities found the parents rehearsed the sick tale with their daughter and her twin sister – hoping to incriminate their fellow resident amid a fight over his room at the Hotel Mint JFK Airport in Far Rockaway, according to the official, who has knowledge of the scheme.
The initial police report indicated that the sisters were playing in the hallway around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday when a man convinced them to follow him to a room on the second floor, according to sources.
Police were told that the man then placed a knife against the neck of one of the girls and touched her private area.
When the twins’ mother knocked on the door, the man jumped out the window, according to the initial account.
The man accused of the assault then walked back into the building through the lobby, where he got into a fight with the youngsters’ older brother, sources initially said.
Cops broke up the brawl and cuffed the then-suspected child molester, according to the initial narrative.
But the arrest was voided when investigators from the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit tracked the suspect’s phone, and determined he was elsewhere when the alleged incident took place, the official said.
It is unclear how the fight erupted or why the man was in the lobby when he was accused of sexual assault and arrested.
Investigators also re-interviewed the twins and found that their stories sounded overly rehearsed.
The man was then released from custody, the insider said.
A young married couple from Venezuela told The Post Thursday that they heard some commotion the night of the incident, but did not know what was going on.
“Last night there [was] shouting, fighting, outside … a man was shouting at another man in front of [the lobby] door but we [went] inside and locked the door,” the woman told The Post, adding that there were “many children” staying there and she didn’t know the people involved.
The couple was previously staying at a different shelter, but relocated when the rowdy conditions got out of hand — though their new location hasn’t been much of an improvement, the husband said.
“It is wild here,” the man said as he pointed inside. “At the shelter before, there [was] trouble every night. We moved here because I complained about the shelter. It was not safe. I could not sleep. This is wild and there is trouble. I do not let [my wife] walk without me.”
The hotel shelters asylum seekers and also accepts bookings from customers, according to a worker who answered the phone there Thursday.
Stuart Warburton, 52, his wife, Kim, 31, and mother, Maureen, 80, all from the UK, said they had been staying at the hotel for two weeks at a rate of $244 a night — and found the conditions appalling.
“We booked it on Expedia and it just said JFK Airport Hotel, the Mint Hotel JFK Airport,” Warburton told The Post.
“We thought it was an airport hotel! It is absolutely disgusting in there,” he continued. “And every night between midnight and 1, you hear all these children screaming, and then the parents push them out into the hallways and lock the doors and they leave the kids out running around and screaming and going crazy unattended in the hallways all night.
“The conditions are terrible,” he added. “I wouldn’t let my dog live here in these conditions.”