A day on the beach became tragic when a 17-year-old boy was killed after a sand tunnel that he had abruptly collapsed and buried him alive.
The teenager, identified as Riccardo Boni by various Italian media, was on holiday in Montalto di Castro, Italy, with his family when the incident took place on Thursday 10 July.
The Boni family stayed in a resort in Montalto di Castro, about 70 miles north of Rome. The collapse happened around 3 p.m. local time while he was on the beach with his father and brothers and sisters.
According to the local outlet Corriere della Sera“ Riccardo Boni and his younger brothers and sisters had come closer to the coastline, where they started digging a large hole that was reportedly almost five feet deep, in a more remote part of the beach. In the meantime, their father was in the neighborhood, gone under an umbrella of the beach.
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Air view shows Lido of Ostia, the coast of Rome, with private beaches closed for the winter season, on November 10, 2024. (Photo by Andrea Bernardi / AFP) (Photo by Andrea Bernardi / AFP via Getty images)
Suddenly the walls of the tunnel took place, taking the teenager under the sand, the exhaust reported.
The boy kept buried until his father woke up and realized that his eldest son was missing. One of his brothers shouted: “Riccardo is under the sand”, ” according to Sun. The brothers and sisters pointed to the location of the collapsed tunnel, so that their father and nearby beachgoers hurry to hurry and dig a frantically in search of him.
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A view of a beach in Cinque Terre, Liguria, Italy on July 27, 2024. (Photo by Gian Marco Benedetto/Anadolu via Getty images)
Tragically enough, the boy was buried in the sand, did not respond and did not show any signs of life. First responders arrived within a few minutes, including an air ambulance, who could do him new life, but it was too late and the boy could not be saved, the outlet reported.
“No one realized what had happened,” Lieuteniele Tramontana, the officer of the Carabiniere who led the police investigation, told the Sun.
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Children dig a hole on a beach while people walk by. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“They lost a lot of time because they couldn’t see him. When they realized he was missing, they started looking for him, but it was too late,” he continued.
A witness on the beach told Corriere della Serra That “nobody on the beach had heard the teenager screaming because he was fully buried in a few minutes.”
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Since then, a police investigation has been opened “against persons unknown” in connection with the fatal accident, the outlet added, as the authorities consider whether an autopsy will be required.
“I spoke with colleagues and we have never heard that something like that happens earlier in Italy,” said Tramontana. “We always treat terrible situations, but we cannot imagine how a game on the beach ended up in this way.”
