Horror Find: Dozens Dead In U-Haul

U-Haul moving truck driving on a road — Photo: Matt Gush / Shutterstock

Animal rights activists pulled 83 chickens, many already dead, from an abandoned U-Haul truck in Brooklyn last Friday night, and police say the birds were headed for a ritual slaughter tied to the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Story Snapshot

Activists rescued 83 chickens from an abandoned U-Haul truck in Flatbush, Brooklyn, around 8:30 p.m. Friday.
The New York Post reported an initial count of 200 chickens, with only 80 still alive when found.
Police confirmed the incident and said surviving birds were taken to an undisclosed sanctuary.
The case echoes a decade of legal fights over Kaporos, a pre-Yom Kippur ritual involving live chickens.

Truck Full Of Suffering Found In Brooklyn

Animal rights activists told Gothamist they found the U-Haul truck abandoned in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Friday night. John Di Leonardo, one of the activists on scene, described the chickens as dehydrated, weak, and surrounded by flies. “Many of them were dead,” he said. The New York Police Department confirmed the discovery happened around 8:30 p.m. and said officers moved the survivors to an undisclosed sanctuary.

The New York Post reported a higher initial count, saying 200 chickens were found and only 80 were still alive by the time rescuers arrived. The paper linked the abandoned birds to a ritual tied to an Orthodox Jewish holiday, calling their intended fate “extremely inhumane”. Neither report has been contradicted by any other named source, agency, or court record.

A Ritual With A Long History Of Conflict

The practice at the center of this story is called Kaporos. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews swing a live chicken overhead while reciting a prayer before slaughtering the bird, a custom meant to symbolically transfer sins ahead of Yom Kippur. For more than a decade, animal rights groups have sued New York City, arguing the ritual leaves birds crammed into overcrowded crates for days, dehydrated, and sometimes dead before they are ever used.

Courts have repeatedly declined to force the city’s hand. In 2018, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit from the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, ruling that city agencies were not required to enforce animal cruelty and health laws in a specific way against the practice. Legal analysts have noted that judges have consistently sidestepped ruling on whether Kaporos itself is cruel, focusing instead on whether courts can order police and health officials to act.

Pattern Of Sightings Around Brooklyn Streets

This is not an isolated incident. Just last September, two dead chickens were found positioned head-to-tail on a Brooklyn-adjacent Manhattan median, an incident experts said may have also been tied to ritual practices. Advocates say the seasonal timing is predictable: Kaporos happens every fall in the days before Yom Kippur, concentrated in specific Brooklyn neighborhoods, which creates recurring opportunities for documentation, protest, and conflict between religious practitioners and animal welfare groups.

•Hundreds of dead chickens were found crammed in crates inside two abandoned U-Haul trucks in Brooklyn, discovered Friday afternoon with only a few still alive after days of neglect.
•The chickens are believed linked to Kapparot, a pre-Yom Kippur atonement ritual practiced by… https://t.co/DQu0F9Xxzh

— B Wruble (@WrubleB) September 20, 2026

What makes this case stand out is the scale and the setting. Chickens showing up dead on a median is one thing. Dozens of birds, some already dead from apparent neglect, left inside a rented moving truck on a residential Brooklyn street is a different level of visibility. Whether any charges follow, or whether this becomes another footnote in the long legal history around Kaporos, remains to be seen.

For now, the facts are not in dispute. Police confirmed the discovery. Activists documented the conditions. Survivors went to a sanctuary. What happens next, both for the birds’ fate and for accountability over how they got there, is the open question hanging over Brooklyn as Yom Kippur approaches.