Police in Brooklyn are investigating two separate groups of people seen climbing out of manholes overnight Friday, one in Williamsburg and another about an hour later in Gravesend. The episodes, caught on video in different corners of the borough, pulled officers, emergency crews and city inspectors into two neighborhoods that woke up to an unusual and unsettling question: who was underground, and why?
The first group was seen around 1 a.m. at Heyward Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, where video showed eight people entering the sewer system. Police said they came back out a short time later and drove off in a car. About an hour later, seven people emerged from the sewer near McDonald Avenue and Collin Place in Gravesend, and surveillance video from the Flatbush Scoop showed them climbing out one by one before gathering near two parked cars.
The Gravesend scene drew scrutiny because officials said the area was safe and free of hazards, even as the Department of Environmental Protection inspected the sewer infrastructure there and found no damage. DEP also said entering the sewer system is illegal and extremely dangerous, warning that sewers can contain noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks and confined spaces. For that reason, the agency said, no one should ever enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole or outfall.
That mismatch — a sewer system that city inspectors said showed no damage, paired with a night of people coming out of it — left investigators with the same basic mystery in both neighborhoods. Police said it was still unclear on Friday whether the Williamsburg and Gravesend incidents were connected, and officers were seen trying to untangle the Gravesend case in Citizen app video while a large police scene took over Williamsburg later in the day.
The questions land against a strange recent backdrop in Brooklyn. Roughly six months ago, a man disappeared overnight into the sewer system in Dyker Heights, adding another episode to a pattern that now spans more than one neighborhood. For Friday’s two incidents, the immediate facts are plain: two groups, two locations, one borough, and no public explanation yet for what they were doing underground.
