On Saturday around noon, Leonard Shoulders walked up to a bus stop in the Belmont area of the Bronx. However, a hole suddenly appeared on the sidewalk and Mr. Shoulders, 33, fell through, leaving shocked passers-by to rush to the edge of the pit and see an eerie sight. Shoulders fell into a rat-infested basement 12 to 15 feet deep. CCTV footage shows a man walking towards a bus stop on Third Avenue, 183rd Street. He steps forward and suddenly falls into the ground. «He was waiting for the bus and just fell,» — said the victim's brother Greg White. His brother was trapped for about 30 minutes. «The rats were crawling on him. He couldn't move. It was so awful. He didn't want to scream because he was afraid that rats would crawl into his mouth. » Mr. White said his brother also sustained head and arm injuries, and the firefighters were able to haul Shoulders out and take him to the hospital by ambulance. The victim's relatives said he was considering a lawsuit. According to the authorities, the sidewalk above the building's basement was in disrepair and collapsed. This is not the first time the sidewalk has collapsed into the basement below. The city has received at least 35 reports of sidewalk sinkholes since July 2019, according to reports.
