Rocks rain down on Midtown intersection

MIDTOWN, Manhattan (WABC) -- Things fall from the sky with alarming regularity in Midtown Manhattan, but this is a bit much.

At the busy intersection of 57th St. and 8th Ave. Friday night, several volleys of small rocks rained down on the sidewalk below.

It was raining rocks, on Anowar Chowdury's newsstand.

"One drop on the magazine right here and then one drop right there," he said.

Giant pebbles were pelting pedestrians.

"And then I hear again drop another one over there, one over here, one right here, one right there," Chowdury said.

He said it happened in waves, leaving glass shattered, pavement pockmarked, and a windshield cracked. He called 911. They arrived and it started again.

"We heard something crash down hit the pavement and we saw the police officer standing right there," said Steven Lobosco, an eyewitness.

"And the cop just all of a sudden was like stop! Don't come this way there's rocks falling!" said Jessica Spitzer, an eyewitness.

"I immediately thought somebody was throwing them, I don't know who, if there was a little kid playing with them but it definitely didn't seem by accident," Lobosco said.

Police seem to agree. For a few hours they went door to door on this busy block, with a mix of high rise office and residential buildings.

The rocks seem fairly uniform, as if they're decorative features of a roof garden somewhere.

Now they're evidence, off what exactly isn't quite clear.

But what is clear is that blocks from Columbus Circle on a busy Friday night, it's pretty lucky no one was hit.

"Nobody got hurt, thank God, yep," Chowdury said.

"It's not every day you're walking down the street and there's rocks falling on your head," Spitzer said. "It's not something you expect in New York."

Josh Einiger reported live from the scene on Facebook: