Falling Tree Kills NYCHA Worker in Brooklyn as Nor'easter Cuts Power to More Than 130,000 Customers in the Northeast

A Tree, a Storm, and a Man Walking to His Car

Leighton Brown was 56 years old and had spent more than a decade fixing things at the Cypress Hills Houses in Brooklyn. On Saturday afternoon, Sept. 26, as a nor'easter tore through the region, he was walking through the parking lot at 700 Euclid Ave. when a tree came down and struck him^[3][4]. He was rushed to Brookdale Hospital. He did not survive^[2][4].

He is, as of the latest reports, the only confirmed death from the storm^[4][5]. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called him "one of our own"^[4]. Four other people in the city were hurt by falling trees over the weekend, including two children and two women struck by a branch at a Brooklyn playground^[4][17].

Brown's death happened inside a much bigger weather event, one that knocked out power to more than 130,000 utility customers, flooded roads on the Jersey Shore, and pushed three governors to activate emergency powers^{[1][7][8][10]}. The storm is not finished. Officials were still warning of more flooding as of Monday^[11].

What the Storm Actually Did

The nor'easter moved in on Friday, Sept. 25, and stalled off the coast, dumping rain and wind on a stretch of coastline from Virginia to New England^[8][13]. Storms like this are common in winter. One forming in September is rare — it happens in only about 1% of nor'easters on record^[8].

The strongest wind reading came from Montauk Point, at the eastern tip of Long Island, where the National Weather Service clocked a gust of 81 mph^[6][8]. That is stronger than the wind needed for a Category 1 hurricane, which starts at 74 mph. But it was one peak reading in one place. Most of the region saw gusts of 40 to 60 mph, well below hurricane strength^[5].

East Hampton, also on Long Island, recorded 3.3 inches of rain^[6]. In New Jersey, rescuers pulled dozens of people out of floodwater that reached 2 to 3 feet deep, according to Gov. Mikie Sherrill^[11]. Hundreds of flights were canceled up and down the coast^[1].

Three states responded with formal emergency powers. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency covering New York City plus Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties^[8]. Sherrill's order in New Jersey took effect at 5 p.m. Friday and covered eight counties: Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean and Salem^[7]. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont activated his state's emergency operations center^[10]. In New York City, Mamdani issued a travel advisory and told coastal residents to move their cars to higher ground^[9].

Why the Power-Outage Number Keeps Changing

If you read three different stories about this storm, you probably saw three different outage counts: 100,000, more than 130,000, and 136,000^[1][5][18]. None of them is wrong. They are just snapshots taken at different moments.

A utility "customer" is not a person — it is a single account, usually one home or one business. So every outage figure understates the actual number of people affected, since most homes hold more than one person. On top of that, the count changes by the hour. Crews restore some lines while wind and rain knock down others, so the total keeps moving even while repair work is underway.

By Sunday evening, PSEG Long Island had restored power to 93,700 customers and had about 18,500 still in the dark, out of roughly 1.2 million it serves on the island^[6]. That is real progress, but it also shows the scale of what went out in the first place. Utility repair costs on storms like this typically get passed on to customers later through rates set by state regulators, which is one reason companies emphasize how fast they got the lights back on.

The Parks Department's 400 Trees

New York City's Parks Department put crews on 12-hour shifts once the storm hit, and by the end of Saturday they had logged about 400 reports of downed trees across the five boroughs^[4]. That number gives some sense of why a tree fell on Brown in the first place. High wind on its own often isn't enough to topple a mature tree. Add heavy rain that softens the ground around the roots, and trees that have stood for decades come down.

Cities generally don't respond to that risk by cutting down trees ahead of a storm. Instead they respond the way New York did here — with emergency crews clearing hazards as they appear, after the fact rather than before it^[4]. That reactive approach is standard practice, but it also means a falling tree is a genuine and largely unpredictable risk during any storm with this kind of wind and rain, in any city with mature street trees.

Mamdani's office has faced criticism before over how it handled winter storm response, which is part of why the administration has reason to want to look prepared and fast-moving this time^[4]. That doesn't make the underlying tree-clearing effort any less real — the 400 logged reports and the 12-hour shifts happened regardless of who is watching.

How Different Outlets Told the Same Story

Search results turned up no evidence that any major outlet, left or right, tried to turn this storm into a political fight. Breitbart and Fox Weather covered it as a straight weather story — outages, flooding, the death — using dramatic language like "slams" and "dangerous winds whip" but assigning no blame to city or state leadership^[14][13]. CNN ran a live blog with similarly standard weather-story language, "lashes," and no policy angle^[15].

Local New York television stations leaned into Brown's story specifically, describing him as a fix-it man who had just talked about life's unpredictability, and airing tributes from his coworkers^[3]. The Jerusalem Post led its coverage with travel disruption, headlining the story around more than 400 canceled flights, with the death mentioned but not in the headline^[12].

One outlet, Al Jazeera, filed its story under "Climate News," even though the article itself reads as straight wire copy and does not make a climate argument in its own text^[1]. That filing choice invites readers toward a climate framing the reporting doesn't actually state. Separately, Philadelphia Weekly's headline described New Jersey's emergency as "statewide," while Sherrill's actual order named eight specific counties, not the whole state^[7][16].

What Comes Next

The storm was still working through the region as of Monday, with New Jersey officials warning that more flooding was possible along the Shore^[11]. The final tally — of trees down, dollars in damage, homes flooded, and any federal disaster aid states end up requesting — will take shape over the coming weeks, not this one.

For now, the numbers that made headlines this weekend are best read as snapshots rather than final totals: an outage count taken at one hour will look different from one taken the next, and a flight-cancellation tally from Saturday won't match Monday's. What isn't in dispute is the human cost already on the record. Leighton Brown went to work Saturday during a state of emergency, and he did not come home.