NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — A stash of crystal meth was discovered this week inside a Staten Island hotel currently being used as an emergency housing center for migrants and homeless individuals, police said Friday.
Police responded to a tip at around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday from a worker at the Ramada by Wyndham located at 535 North Gannon Ave. in Willowbrook, who reported seeing drugs inside a black bag, sources told the New York Post.
The bag found inside one of the rooms where an asylum seeker was reported to have been staying contained a pound of meth, the sources said.
In May, the hotel was converted into a 35-unit emergency shelter, according to city officials.
“We don’t know if it's a full migrant shelter or partial,” Borough President Vito Fossella said during a press conference on Friday. “If this is true, this is a disaster for the city. The last thing we want popping up in a migrant shelter—who knows what it costs per night or per year here—is to have crystal meth. So, we want to raise this awareness that this is intolerable and we can’t keep this going.”
Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis called on Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD to be more transparent and to “give as much information as possible to the surrounding community, particularly the elected officials who represent this shelter, as to how these drugs made their way into this facility and who brought them there.”
No suspects have been identified in connection to the incident.
The investigation is ongoing, police said.