Police report: Top aide to Miami’s mayor sent sexually graphic photo to teen’s phone
Update: On Feb. 7, Rene Pedrosa was arrested and charged with battery and transmitting pornography to a minor after police said he groped a teen in City Hall and later sent the teen a sexually explicit picture. Read more here.
A top aide to Miami’s mayor recently sent a picture of his penis to a minor, according to police.
An incident report obtained Wednesday by the Miami Herald claims that a teenager received a picture of the aide’s penis on a computer or cellphone just before 9 p.m. on Jan. 19 and that police were called within two minutes.
The report says Rene Pedrosa, 48, solicited some type of picture from the teen, who was familiar with Pedrosa. What exactly he solicited was redacted.
“The victim and the person reporting came to the station and reported that the suspect [Pedrosa] solicited a [redaction] picture from the victim. The suspect also sent a penis picture to the victim,” the lead officer wrote in the incident report.
Pedrosa, the mayor’s spokesman and a former television reporter, resigned Tuesday after Mayor Francis Suarez said Pedrosa admitted he was being investigated for “personal misconduct.”
On Wednesday, Suarez refused to comment for this story.
The list of offenses, according to the report, are sexual performance by a child, possession of pornography and soliciting a child via computer and transmission of material harmful to minors.
It lists Pedrosa as the suspect and does not name the teen.
On Wednesday the teen’s family hired attorney Raymond Rafool, who would only say that he understands an arrest is “imminent.” Rafool said he wouldn’t comment because the case is an ongoing investigation, and that the family is requesting privacy.
Pedrosa spent years as a television news reporter at América TeVé-Channel 41, a Spanish-language television station that covers news across Miami-Dade County. Pedrosa often covered stories in local government and the court system.
He joined the mayor’s staff in January 2019 as Suarez’s communications director. Pedrosa became a top adviser and spokesman for the mayor, known for pushing the mayor’s views in local media, especially on Spanish-language radio.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney could well ask the governor to assign the investigation to another prosecutor’s office, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. As a longtime local media member, Pedrosa was well known to the office of State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle.
Her office did not say Wednesday if it would seek to hand off the investigation.
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 8:21 PM.
