Major Panic in Brooklyn after People Mysteriously Emerge from Manhole at 2AM

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.

— Willer Green, 39, one of three men arrested in a near-identical Brooklyn sewer incident in 2025, per PIX11

The incident is not as unusual as it sounds. New York City has a well-documented history of underground treasure hunting. In 2015, a part-time Department of Environmental Protection employee was arrested after letting two men into the East Flatbush sewer system to search for jewelry, all three were charged with criminal trespassing.

A decade later, in April 2025, three men were arrested in Bensonhurst after removing a manhole cover near 17th Avenue and 82nd Street for the same purpose, charged with burglary and possession of burglary tools. One of those men, 39-year-old Willer Green, told police he had done it before: "Look me up - I made the news in 2015."

The NYPD noted that entering the city's sewer system without authorization is illegal and that arrests have been made in past incidents. Investigators are currently working to identify the individuals involved in Friday morning's Flatbush operation. No charges had been announced as of Sunday.

Context: Manhattan's manhole crisis

The incident comes at a fraught moment for New York's relationship with its underground infrastructure. Complaints to 311 about defective or missing manhole covers have nearly doubled this year compared to the same period in 2025, 714 calls through May 19, versus 374 for the same stretch last year. The surge follows the death of Donike Gocaj, 56, a Westchester woman who stepped out of her car on East 52nd Street in Midtown last week and plunged into an open, uncovered manhole, dying later from severe burns and blunt force trauma. A Con Edison truck had dislodged the cover minutes before. The city has no formal routine inspection process for its roughly 700,000 manhole covers.

Whether gold actually accumulates in New York City's sewer system in any meaningful quantity is, to say the least, unverified. What is certain is that the belief persists, and that at least some New Yorkers are willing to spend two hours in the dark beneath Brooklyn's streets to test the theory.