dpThe city is once again investigating an incident involving people apparently moving through its underground infrastructure.
Police confirmed that the latest incident occurred near West 31st Street and Seventh Avenue by Penn Station on Tuesday shortly after 4 a.m.
It follows two other incidents in May in which police said groups of seven and eight people were spotted entering manholes in Gravesend and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, then emerging hours later.
The most recent incident was recorded in a video shared on social media, in which about five people can be seen exiting a manhole. Some appear to be wearing dark clothing and headlamps.
“Oh s—! They really do that s—,” Ricardy Fabre, who recorded the video, can be heard saying in the background. Fabre confirmed to Gothamist that he was the person speaking in the recording.
Fabre said he had been waiting in line for concert tickets when he spotted the people emerging from the manhole. He said he also saw a nearby idling car that he believed may have been connected to the group.
Fabre said he was shocked by what he saw, though he had heard of other recent incidents in which people were seen emerging from beneath city streets.
“I couldn’t believe people would go down there. I couldn’t believe how many of them were there. I couldn’t believe what they were wearing, and then they had the flashlights attached to their heads,” he said.
Fabre said he worried the people might notice him recording and return. He described their exit as seeming “professional” and “strategic,” though he did not know what they had been doing underground.
He said he was left with “all these unanswered questions” about what could have been happening.
“I imagine there’s like a long history of people like exploring the sewers, but it just seemed, seemed really strange,” he said.
A spokesperson for the city Department of Environmental Protection said the agency inspected the sewers at the location and found the infrastructure to be safe. The spokesperson also warned that entering the sewer system is illegal and can expose people to potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding and other hazards.
Police haven’t said whether the Manhattan incident is connected to either of the incidents in Brooklyn. No arrests have been made in the latest incident and the investigation is ongoing, according to the NYPD.
