Video shows a pack of pipsqueak youths — including an 11-year-old migrant boy — rush through a Queens subway station moments after pulling off a violent mugging.
The Venezuelan migrant child can be seen wearing a white tank top and grinning widely as he pushes his way through a turnstile Tuesday evening, footage exclusively obtained by The Post shows.
Three other pint-sized perps also run through the turnstiles in the Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue stop, near where they — led by the 11-year-old main “aggressor” — allegedly attacked a 24-year-old straphanger and stole his phone aboard a 7 train, police said.
The pee-wee “aggressor,” who was nabbed by cops along with a 17-year-old boy in Midtown hours after the shocking robbery, has been linked to a spate of robberies in Central Park carried out by migrant kids, said NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell.
“At this point in time, we are ready to call it: this is a migrant robbery pattern,” he said.
The identities of the other youths in the subway footage remained unclear as of Thursday. Two youngsters linked to the mugging remained on the loose.
The 11-year-old boy has stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel migrant shelter with his mother and three siblings since last year, said Kataleya, 44, a fellow Venezuelan asylum seeker at the hotel who spoke with The Post Thursday.
Kataleya said children in the shelter didn’t go around committing crimes while they lived in Venezuela.
“They didn’t do that or elsewhere… that happens here,” she said.
She said children “are locked up in the shelter all they at the moment” and “[when] they go out on the streets, I think that’s why they do those things.”
Sara, a 34-year-old Colombian migrant living in the shelter, said she didn’t know the boy, but was dumbfounded to learn about his age.
“He is only 11 years old, yes?” she said in shock, with her mouth opened wide, as she peered at a picture showing the handcuffed youth.
“There are many children who smoke and drink,” she said pointing to her eyes and down, indicating she had seen them puffing marijuana in the past. “They take turns, they pass it around.”
A group of up to 12 migrant boys or young men have been linked to roughly 10 robberies in Central Park, Chell said.
Police are investigating whether the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has been enlisting young boys to commit robberies such as the wave of Central Park muggings, a senior law enforcement official previously told The Post.
The 11-year-old suspected in the subway mugging was caught on surveillance cameras using credit cards that were stolen in the park robberies, police officials said.
