Six Sewer Divers Enter Manhole on Park Avenue, Two Arrested

After briefly troubling the hearts of the average above ground-dwelling East Side resident, a couple of sewer-divers were taken into custody for venturing beneath Park Avenue and East 61st. Street on September 23. Four fellow spelunkers have not been arrested.

Officials still believe that they were merely engaged in a quixotic hunt for sewage-stained trinkets as of Monday, September 28, rather than posing a more serious subterranean threat to either local residents or international representatives—who were in town for the heavily-securitized United National General Assembly, located just a few block south.

Two men, 26-year-old Kevin Rodriguez and 25-year-old Samuel Reveron, were charged with trespass and conspiracy for their expedition after being arrested on September 24. They had reportedly emerged from a manhole near E. 61st Street a day earlier after four hours underground. The exit just so happened to be located just across the way from a hotel that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often stays in when he comes to town, the Loews Regency New York.

It later came to light that six people had entered the manhole in total, shortly after midnight on September 23. Rodriguez and Reveron, who had popped back out by around 4:30 a.m. and fled down Park Avenue, were taken into custody later; they were captured on security camera footage alongside an unidentified third individual. None of their fellow spelunkers have been arrested since.

Yet the alleged conspiracy that cops believe Rodriguez and Reveron were spinning up had nothing to do with anybody attending the U.N., and they made that clear before any arrests were made.

Rather, investigators say that the men appeared to be seeking valuable items that had taken an unfortunate tumble into the loo or a sink or fallen down a sewer drain dnd been flushed away, rather than plotting any violent attack from below. They face misdemeanor charges, have been released on their own recognizance, and are due back in court on November 25.

“We have seen a number of incidents over the past few months of individuals going into the sewer system to look for valuables and other scrap metal after a storm,” police said in a statement shortly after the incident. However, officials also cited the incident in order to step up security measures for the then-ongoing UNGA proceedings.

“This incident fits that same criteria, but out of an abundance of caution given the U.N. General Assembly and the sensitivity of the location, the NYPD is conducting additional security sweeps with our federal partners,” the statement added.

“They’re just two hard-luck guys that were driven by desperation to go into grime and rat-infested sewers looking for jewelry and other valuables,” Reveron’s lawyer Brian Kennedy told the New York Times.

Reveron and Rodriguez have not pioneered the practice, however, which in fact appears to be turning into something of a trend. Over the summer, as reported by Our Town, five different spelunkers (or “mole people,” as they are sometimes known) were caught out camera popping out of a manhole near Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

They had been wearing loose black overalls and headlamps, footage posted on social media revealed. “They really do that s*it,” a bystander filming across the street said, sounding evidently stunned as the emerging spelunkers either strolled or jogged away from the manhole. There have been several other incidents in Brooklyn and Queens and one on Long Island in recent months.