A waitress was hospitalized on Tuesday after coming into contact with a mysterious white powder in a hotel room in midtown Manhattan, authorities said.
The woman was cleaning a room at the Park Hyatt hotel on West 57th Street when she discovered a “white powdery substance” near the bathroom sink and began feeling dizzy and nauseous around 1:20 p.m., police said.
The FDNY responded and swabbed the surfaces in the room. They tested the collected samples and found a possible trace of an explosive substance, NYPD Deputy Chief James McCarthy said at a news conference.
The NYPD bomb squad and the FBI then responded to the hotel and evacuated the entire 11th floor as a precaution and collected their own samples from inside the room, McCarthy said.
Their tests found no evidence of potentially harmful material and investigators believe the FDNY’s initial test was a false positive, McCarthy said.
However, later on Tuesday evening, police arrested a man they believe to be the source of the mysterious powder, sources said.
McCarthy said the suspect, who had 16 previous arrests for low-level crimes, had broken into the hotel room after a family checked out Sunday morning and spent the night there.
The man is believed to have recovered a hotel card key from the room that a family member had dropped. He entered the room at 8:30 pm Sunday and left at 10:30 the next morning, McCarthy said.
The unidentified suspect is known to have entered hotels, he added.
Police said there was no threat to the public.
“I want to emphasize to all New Yorkers and visitors that there is no credible threat to the city right now,” McCarthy said Tuesday night.
