A Baltimore County mother says a man living in a sewer near her home has harassed her children and once chased them down the street, and even after police action, she says she still does not feel like she or her kids are protected. Unique Wiggins said the trouble did not come out of nowhere — she had heard similar complaints from her children at least four times before she decided to investigate herself.
At first, Wiggins did not believe what her children were telling her. According to CBS News / WJZ, she initially did not think a man underground was actually talking to them from a sewer, until she went to check it out herself and heard someone singing near the manhole. That was enough to convince her the complaints were real.
The situation escalated this past Friday, Wiggins said, when her 21-year-old daughter called her in a panic. The daughter told her the man in the sewer had instructed her not to walk there and to leave, per the same account. Wiggins said the man has also spoken directly to her children and chased them down the street, which is what prompted her to call police.
Police Response and Limits on Enforcement
Baltimore County police told Wiggins that the man was arrested and released on his own recognizance on October 13. Officers also served another peace order on Thursday, with that order set to expire on October 26. Police said they offered the man mobile services, but the offer was unsuccessful, the station's report notes.
Police also told Wiggins that sewer lines and culverts are public property, which limits what action officers can take against someone living in them. Under Maryland law, a final peace order can direct a respondent to refrain from contacting, attempting to contact, or harassing a petitioner, according to the Maryland General Assembly. Peace and protective orders are civil orders issued by a judge directing a person to refrain from specified conduct, according to a Maryland Courts explainer — but enforcing that order against someone whose only address is a drainage system has proven far more complicated in practice.
A Mother Still Waiting for Answers
Wiggins believes the man trespassed on her property and broke into her car, though that claim is attributed only to her own belief in the WJZ report. She said the man should not be allowed to live in the sewer or stay there, and has proposed posting a no-trespassing sign and covering the holes as safety measures for her street.
WJZ reached out to Baltimore County Housing and Development for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication. Reporters also said they did not see or hear the man in the neighborhood during their visit to the area.
Wiggins said plainly that she does not feel that she or her children are protected under the current arrangement, even with two peace orders now on record. The case highlights a gap that housing advocates elsewhere have pointed to as well — the question of who is responsible when someone is living in public infrastructure rather than a shelter or private property. A similar dynamic played out in Los Angeles, where EURweb reported that people living underground in South LA exposed broader failures in housing policy and city response.
Homelessness Pressures in the Background
Baltimore County conducts an annual Point-in-Time Count, tallying sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January, as required by HUD for counting people in emergency shelter, transitional housing and safe havens, according to Baltimore County Government. The county's Eastside Family and Men's Shelter, operated out of the county-owned Eastern Family Resource Center, is run by St. Vincent de Paul with support from other agencies.
Regionally, a recent WYPR report found some small changes in Baltimore's unhoused population for 2026, with one observer noting that the high cost of living has pushed people to stay in emergency shelter longer because they cannot afford to go anywhere else. None of that broader context establishes who the man near Wiggins's home is or whether he has ever used county homelessness services — those details remain unknown. For now, Wiggins is left watching the calendar toward the October 26 expiration of the latest peace order, uncertain what happens next.
