It was just after 2:00 in the morning on McDonald Avenue in Flatbush when the manhole cover shifted and people began emerging from the street. One by one, ultimately six of them, they climbed out of the underground drainage system near the Kosher Korner Supermarket, between Kings Highway and Avenue S, as a seventh person who had been standing watch above ground looked on. Residents who spotted the scene immediately called the police. Within minutes, a major NYPD response had sealed off the block.
The group had reportedly been underground for nearly two hours. Video obtained by the Flatbush Scoop, which spread rapidly across community WhatsApp groups and social media, showed the individuals surfacing one after another in the dead of night, prompting an avalanche of rumors, including voice notes circulating through the Brooklyn Jewish community claiming that a body had been found beneath the street. The NYPD moved quickly to stamp those out, calling the body rumors "100% fake news."
The actual explanation was, in its own way, stranger than the rumors. The NYPD confirmed to Flatbush Scoop that the individuals had descended into the city's underground drainage system to search for lost gold and jewelry, acting on a longstanding belief, well known to New York police, that valuable items lost on city streets eventually wash into storm drains and accumulate in the sewer system below.
"The reason we went down there is that people lose their gold down there. We got to get it and sell it to make money."
— Willer Green, 39, one of three men arrested in a near-identical Brooklyn sewer incident in 2025, per PIX11
