A mysterious big-city Sasquatch has been secretly living in a cave in Manhattan for over a month, The Post has learned.
Ecuadoran immigrant Omar Torrez said his home is now a secluded rocky crevasse in Inwood Hill Park that dates back to the Ice Age.
Torrez has so carefully hidden any trace of his presence that a Parks Department worker leading 20 children on a tour through the caves yesterday never noticed Torrez’s possessions in the 15-foot-deep tunnel.
His socks are tucked under a rock, his sleeping bag carefully rolled up behind another. And his radio sits wedged between two other rocks near the cave’s ceiling.
Even as the tour group passed through his rough shelter, they never noticed the 5-foot-8 Torrez calmly watching them from behind some trees across the narrow valley.
The guide told the children that Native Americans once used the handful of caves as “a kind of Indian motel” as they passed through the area.
He also told them that the rocks keep the cave cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter – especially if something is placed in the mouth of the cave to block out any wind.
After the children left, Torrez quickly slipped inside unnoticed to make sure all his meager possessions were still there.
In Spanish and broken English, the clean-shaven, short-haired Torrez told a Post reporter he buys food by redeeming the cans he collects for the nickel deposit, and has enough clothing to spend the rest of the winter there.
Asked if he had enough food and was warm enough, he mumbled simply, “Si.”
Torrez, 30, said he came to America six months ago from the town of Guayaquil in Ecuador.
It was not clear if he immigrated legally, or where he was living in New York before he moved into the cave.
His cave is made of mica, a soft stone with specks of lighter material that shone brightly in the winter sun as Torrez moved quietly away.
After speaking briefly to a reporter, Torrez suddenly slung two bags of cans over his shoulder, hopped on a new blue bicycle, and sped away, saying he would return later after he had gotten money for the cans.
The cave is one of a handful in the 196-acre park at the northern tip of Manhattan.
The story of a man living in a New York City cave made it to the big screen last year in a major Hollywood film starring Samuel L. Jackson.
In “The Caveman’s Valentine,” Jackson played a schizophrenic pianist who had taken to living in a cave and believed the Chrysler Building was projecting mind-control beams at him.
A number of so-called “mole men” live year-round in the tunnels carrying trains through Manhattan to Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal.
Unlike Torrez, many of the mole men have built semi-permanent shelters in their underground hideaways.