Five people were seen climbing out of a New York City sewer through a manhole near East 82nd Street and East End Avenue on the Upper East Side just after 2 a.m. on Friday, October 9, 2026, according to CBS New York, before piling into a black Suburban and driving off. No injuries or arrests were reported, and investigators have not said whether any tools were recovered from the manhole.
The sighting, first reported by CBS New York, is the latest in a monthslong string of unauthorized sewer-entry incidents that have rattled New Yorkers and drawn police responses across the city and beyond. Just weeks earlier, three people climbed out of a sewer on the same side of Manhattan before driving away, and two Queens men were later arrested in connection with that intrusion, police said.
A Pattern That Keeps Surfacing Near High-Profile Ground
The September 23 incident near Park Avenue and East 61st Street drew outsized attention amid the U.N. General Assembly and the sensitivity of the location, prompting NYPD and federal partners to sweep the area, according to The Guardian. Police ultimately concluded that the episode was unrelated to diplomatic security.
Later, NYPD officers arrested 25-year-old Queens residents Samuel Reveron and Kevin Rodriguez, tracking them from a Manhattan manhole and charging both with criminal trespass and conspiracy, the newspaper reported. Reveron later said the pair had entered the sewer system to search for valuables, including gold, shifting the investigation away from fears of an infrastructure or security threat.
Court records reviewed in late September showed Reveron and Rodriguez were released without bail, per the same account.
From Brooklyn Rooftops of Manholes to Long Island Streets
The trend did not start on the Upper East Side. In late May, security cameras recorded separate groups carrying tools and flashlights emerging from manholes in Williamsburg and Gravesend, Brooklyn, with one group changing clothes near parked cars after spending nearly three hours underground, Global News reported.
By August 18, the phenomenon had reached one of Manhattan's busiest transit hubs, when viral footage showed people in waders and headlamps climbing out of a sidewalk manhole on Seventh Avenue directly across from Penn Station, as Hoodline previously reported. Nine days later, Nassau County Police responded to reports of five men opening a manhole cover and descending into a sewer at Wantagh and Jerusalem avenues on Long Island, marking the trend's expansion into suburban communities, according to CBS New York. Officers searched nearby underground tunnels but found no suspects or structural damage.
Why Officials Keep Warning New Yorkers to Stay Out
City officials and environmental experts continue to warn people against entering the sewer system at all, citing a list of hazards that include noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces.
Sewer hazards such as toxic gases and flooding can make a search for lost valuables dangerous.
For now, Friday's five Upper East Side escapees remain unidentified, and the NYPD has not said whether this incident is connected to the earlier arrests or any of the other sewer entries recorded from Brooklyn to Long Island since the spring.
