A father’s frantic, bare-handed digging failed to save a 17-year-old boy who died when a deep tunnel he was digging on an Italian beach suddenly caved in and buried him alive.
The teen and his family were on vacation in Montalto di Castro, Italy, about 70 miles north of Rome, when the accident occurred under the bright midday sun Thursday afternoon.
The victim was identified as Riccardo Boni in an extensive story in the Sun.
Fox News reported:
Riccardo Boni and his younger siblings had moved closer to the shoreline, where they began digging a large hole that was reportedly nearly five feet deep, in a more secluded area of the beach. Meanwhile, their father was nearby, dozing off under a beach umbrella.
Suddenly, the walls of the tunnel gave way, trapping the teen beneath the sand.
His siblings, ages only five and eight, apparently did not realize the tunnel had collapsed. It was only when his father woke up and realized his oldest son was not around and one of the brothers yelled, “Riccardo is under the sand!” that the family searched for 40 minutes, according to Fox.
Other beachgoers helped the father look for the boy, and the group eventually unearthed him, but he was unresponsive even after first responders arrived and tried to revive him.
“No-one realized what had happened,” Lieutenant Daniele Tramontana, the Carabiniere officer leading the police investigation, told the Sun. “They lost a lot of time because they couldn’t see him. When they realized he was missing they began to look for him but it was too late.”
The boy’s glasses, T-shirt, and sandals were found next to the fatal collapse.
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