Man falls through New York City pavement into ‘rat-filled chasm’

Rats are a common problem in New York City

Credit: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson TPX

A man was trapped in a hole teaming with rats for half an hour after a New York City sidewalk collapsed underneath him on Saturday.

Leonard Shoulders dropped almost 15 feet into the sinkhole and was unable to cry for help out of fear the rats would get in his mouth. 

“Rats crawling on him. He can’t move. He just… it was so bad,” the victim’s brother Greg White told NBC News. 

“He didn’t wanna yell ’cause he was afraid there was gonna be rats going inside his mouth.”

Mr Shoulders had been waiting for a bus in the Bronx when the concrete cracked open and swallowed him whole. 

The 33-year-old was hospitalised with a broken leg and arm after firefighters worked to extradite him from the pit. 

He remains in St. Barnabas Hospital and is in a stable condition, but family members have stressed the mental impact of the incident. 

“He’s traumatised,” Mr Shoulders’ Mother Cindy White said.

"He was like, ‘Ma, the rats down there were ridiculous.’ He was like, ‘They were like so big’,” she added. 

The incident has resonated with New Yorkers by bringing together two major challenges facing the city: its crumbling infrastructure and out of control rat infestation. 

Over two million rats are thought to live alongside New Yorkers, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned they are becoming particularly “aggressive” amid food shortages caused by coronavirus lockdown. 

Infrastructure safety is another growing concern for New Yorkers. At least 35 reports of sidewalk cave ins have been reported to the city since July 2019.

Meanwhile in December of that year, a 60-year-old woman was killed by falling debris from a midtown building. 

A New York Post review of city records following the incident found thousands of buildings with outstanding citations for unsafe exteriors, some over a decade old. 

According to a spokesman for the Department of Buildings the sidewalk under Mr Shoulders collapsed into a vault below that was in a state of disrepair. 

Officials are now investigating who is legally responsible for the vault’s maintenance.