Over 12 “Unauthorized Individuals” Suddenly Popped Out of Brooklyn Manholes, Leaving Residents Baffled

Late one Thursday night in Brooklyn, seven people dropped into the city’s sewer system through a street-level manhole and didn’t come back up for three hours. Police confirmed an investigation is underway after more than a dozen people were seen entering and exiting manholes at two separate Brooklyn locations. No one has been charged. No one has explained why. And the answers, so far, have only made the story stranger.

The first group descended near McDonald Avenue and Colin Place in the Gravesend neighborhood at around 11 p.m. on Thursday, surfacing again close to 2 a.m. the following morning. The 62nd Precinct posted about the incident on social media, confirming that authorities had conducted a thorough investigation after receiving reports of “unauthorized individuals” inside the sewer system on McDonald Avenue. By the time officers arrived, the group had already been underground for hours.

Eight miles away, a second group was already moving. Around 1 a.m. Friday, eight more people were seen descending into the sewers near Heyward Street and Bedford Avenue. Just before 4 a.m., they climbed out of the manholes and escaped in a waiting vehicle. Two groups. Two manholes. Two neighborhoods separated by nearly the length of a borough. Whether they were connected, investigators still could not say.

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The NYPD K-9s, the FDNY, and the DEP All Responded, and Found No Answers

The city sent in a full response. The NYPD K-9 unit, the FDNY, and the Department of Environmental Protection all arrived to inspect the scene. Teams swept both locations, checked the infrastructure, and confirmed no immediate threat to public safety. For a city that rarely mobilizes three agencies over a manhole call, the response alone signaled that officials were treating this as something worth taking seriously.

A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection confirmed that the sewers at both locations were inspected and found to be structurally safe. But the agency was clear about what the inspection did not change: entering the sewer system remains illegal, and no assessment of the pipes alters that. The sweep answered the safety question. It did not answer the one everyone else was asking.

The 62nd Precinct’s post put it plainly: “The NYPD and other agencies have completed their sweep, confirming the area is safe and free of hazards.” Residents in Gravesend read that statement and were left with the same unanswered question: What were more than a dozen people doing in Brooklyn’s sewer system in the middle of the night, across two separate locations, with a getaway car parked and waiting?

“Dangerous, Illegal, and Cannot Be Dismissed”

Council Member Susan Zhuang did not mince words. “What happened in Gravesend and Bedford Avenue this week was dangerous, illegal, and cannot be dismissed,” Zhuang said in a statement. She acknowledged the NYPD and DEP for the speed of their response, but made clear that a clean sweep of the pipes was not the point. The concern was the act itself, not the condition of the concrete.

The DEP spokesperson laid out exactly what anyone entering the sewer system is up against: noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces with no easy exit. These are not theoretical dangers. They are the documented reasons the city prohibits entry entirely, and they apply whether someone is underground for five minutes or five hours.

Zhuang extended her warning directly to the public: “To anyone tempted to explore these spaces: it is not worth your life. If you see someone entering a manhole, call 911 immediately.” Her statement framed the incident not just as a police matter but as a public safety one, raising the possibility that whoever organized these descents had no idea what they were risking, or chose not to care.

A Death in Midtown Shows Exactly What the Underground Can Do

The Brooklyn manholes were not the city’s only recent reminder of what lies beneath its streets. Earlier in May, a 56-year-old woman named Donike Gocaj parked her car near Fifth Avenue and East 52nd Street in Midtown, stepped out, and fell into an uncovered Con Edison manhole about 10 feet deep. She was found unconscious at the scene and later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

The city’s medical examiner ruled the death an accident and determined she died from scald burns with inhalational thermal injury, along with blunt force injury to her chest. She had done nothing wrong. She simply stepped out of her car. The manhole cover, later determined to have been dislodged by a passing truck just minutes before she arrived, was sitting 15 feet away from the opening when officers found it.

A witness who saw Gocaj fall told reporters she closed her car door, took one step forward, and vanished. “She was screaming, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying,'” the witness said. In Brooklyn, more than 15 people made deliberate choices to go underground in the dead of night, for reasons no one has yet explained. The city is still investigating both incidents. One produced a tragedy by accident. The other remains a mystery by design. Manhattan’s open manhole killed a woman in seconds. Brooklyn’s manholes were entered on purpose, in the dark, and everyone walked out. For now.