Manhattan DA Bragg blasts Arizona prosecutor, vows slain Queens sex worker will not be used as political pawn

NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday said he would do everything in his power to seek justice for Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, a sex worker bludgeoned to death in a SoHo hotel room — and would not let a grandstanding Arizona prosecutor use the slain mother as a political pawn.

The NYPD found a lifeless Oleas-Arancibia, 38, in an 11th-floor room at the SoHo 54 Hotel on Feb. 8. Weeks later, on the other side of the country, Raad Almansoori was arrested under suspicion of stabbing two Arizona women and indicated to cops there that he was also behind Oleas-Arancibia’s killing, telling them to Google the hotel where she’d been murdered.

But in a stunning move, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has vowed to block the extradition of Almansoori to New York, saying she doesn’t trust Bragg with the case. That means the slain sex worker could be the last of Almansoori’s alleged victims to get justice.

Bragg fired back at Mitchell — a Republican who’s up for reelection — at a Thursday press conference at his lower Manhattan office, saying he’d never witnessed anything like her stonewalling in his two decades in law enforcement.

He said Mitchell had “cheapened justice” and de-centered a murder victim by politicizing a usually routine extradition procedure that plays out the same in red, blue, and purple states.

“Her reasoning? Not because that’s what the law dictates, not because that’s what advances justice, not because of a concern for victims, not at the request of the NYPD — but rather, plain and simple, old-fashioned grandstanding and politics,” Bragg fumed.

“It is deeply disturbing to me that a member of my profession, a member of law enforcement, would choose to play political games in a murder case,” he added.

In TV and radio interviews Wednesday and Thursday, Mitchell spouted the false claim that several asylum seekers suspected of involvement in a Times Square melee with the NYPD were arrested on her turf after they “were allowed to walk out of jail” on Bragg’s watch.

In fact, all of the migrants accused in the incident have been in custody since their indictments, and federal authorities told Bragg’s office weeks ago there was no truth to reports any had been arrested out west. Bragg sought to hold without bail three of the seven at their court appearances last week and high bail sums for the rest. That, after he came under criticism when several of the defendants were initially released without bail by a judge.

“This has demonstrably been proven to be false — now for weeks — so to repeat a baseless falsehood, now on national TV, is beyond the pale,” Bragg said.

“The Department of Homeland Security [and Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has said these were not those four suspects,” he said, referring to migrants mentioned by Mitchell.

“The NYPD has said that. My office has said it publicly,” he continued. “Different names, different dates of birth, different fingerprints. Different people. My office has indicted seven people in the despicable and heinous attack on two of New York’s Finest. Those seven people have appeared in New York court and are being held as we speak in pretrial detention. Those are the facts.”