NYPD dives into latest NYC sewer mystery as men pop out of manhole near Penn Station

John Annese, New York Daily News on Aug 24, 2026

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NEW YORK — The NYPD is investigating the latest episode of mysterious sewer travel as several men were recently filmed emerging from a city manhole during the wee hours of the morning — this time near Penn Station in Manhattan.

A concert-goer waiting on line to see Olivia Dean at Madison Square Garden told the News he got cell-phone video of three men wearing overalls and headlamps pop out of a manhole at the southeast corner of W. 31st St. and Seventh Ave., at 4:19 a.m. Tuesday. He posted the video on social media.

Two of the men quickly hopped up and hustled down the sidewalk, while the third sat for a second before replacing the manhole cover, and walked away, the video shows.

“I was having a conversation with some people, and then we turned around and saw that there was some folks coming out of the sewer,” said Ricardy Fabre, 37, who recorded the video. “By the time I took my phone out and started recording, I think I caught the last three people coming out, but there were about five.”

A few months earlier, on May 29, two groups of men were spotted infiltrating two separate manholes about 10 miles apart in Brooklyn.

“I was sort of in shock because it’s something you don’t really see every day, but I was also familiar with this type of incident,” Fabre said. “They looked really professional, like they they’d done this before or they do this quite frequently, and and so everyone was kind of like in awe about it,”

A Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said Monday that the agency has inspected the sewers where the men exited, ” and our infrastructure is safe.”

“Entering the sewer system is both illegal and extremely dangerous. Sewers can contain numerous hazards, including noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces,” the spokesman said. “For these reasons, members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole, or outfall.

Police are also looking into the two May 29 incidents. In one, about eight men were seen lifting a manhole cover and entering the sewer in Williamsburg around 1 a.m. near the corner of Bedford Ave. and Heyward St., cops said.

At least one witness saw the group exiting the manhole at about 3:40 a.m. that morning, a police source with knowledge of the case said.

That same morning, video obtained by the Flatbush Scoop shows, seven men climbing out of a manhole under the elevated F train tracks on McDonald Ave. near Colin Place in Gravesend shortly after 2 a.m.

An eighth man, already topside, exited a nearby parked car and walked toward the manhole, apparentyly alerting the men below the coast was clear. Some of the men wore masks, and some wore waders held up by suspenders. Police later determined that the intruders entered the Gravesend sewer about three hours earlier, cops said.

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(New York Daily News Rocco Parascandola reporter contributed to this story.)

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