Police responded early Sunday morning after a 911 caller reported three men climbing into a sewer manhole on West 141st Street between Hamilton Place and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, according to the NYPD.
Officers were dispatched to the scene shortly before 1 a.m. Witnesses told police that at least one of the men later climbed back out and got into a silver-colored vehicle that drove off. The incident remains under investigation, an NYPD spokesperson said.
Firefighters arrived at the location around 1:30 a.m. and determined the report to be “unfounded.”
The episode is the latest in a series of sightings of unidentified people entering and exiting New York City’s sewer system, several of which have been captured on surveillance footage in recent months.
Just two days earlier, on Friday, five men climbed out of a manhole on 82nd Street on the Upper East Side and left in a truck, according to police and sources familiar with the incident.
Last month, two men, Kevin Rodriguez and Samuel Reveron, were arrested after being found moving through underground passages beneath an Upper East Side hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been staying during the UN General Assembly.
In the summer, three men wearing overalls and headlamps were seen emerging from the ground a block from Madison Square Garden, near 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue.
A similar sighting occurred in September of last year in Brooklyn, when three people climbed out of a manhole at Bay Ridge Parkway and 17th Avenue in Bensonhurst around 4:30 a.m. They left the scene before officers could respond to a 911 call.
City officials have suggested the people entering the sewers may be searching for lost valuables such as coins, wallets, scrap metal or jewelry that have fallen into the underground system over time.
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