A teen has died during a family vacation in Lazio, Italy. The 17-year-old boy, identified as Riccardo Boni from Rome, was reportedly digging a tunnel in the sand with his younger siblings. At some point, the tunnel collapsed and trapped him, burying him alive. The teen had been traveling with his parents, 14-year-old sister, 8-year-old brother, and 5-year-old brother.
While on the beach, Riccardo and his brothers began digging a hole in a more secluded area of the beach. The tunnel they constructed was about 5 feet deep. The younger siblings got distracted and left to play in the water, but Riccardo continued to work on the sand tunnel, Riccardo’s father told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera (per People).
According to the New York Post, the father fell asleep at one point. When he woke up, his eldest son was nowhere to be found. Per the US Sun, the family spent about 40 minutes looking for Riccardo. A witness told the news outlet that it was impossible to see anything from the beach. “The hole was gone,” the witness stated. “No one could see that he was under there.”
Riccardo’s father was nearby as the kids worked on the tunnel. “I don’t know if it was the heat or the fatigue, at a certain point, he must have collapsed,” he told Corriere Della Sera. “And he didn’t even have time to scream. Why didn’t he scream? Why didn’t I hear him?”
Riccardo was eventually found unresponsive, and first responders tried to revive him but were unable to do so. Lieutenant Daniele Tramontana, who is leading the investigation, told the US Sun that he has “never heard of anything like this happening before in Italy.”
“We deal with terrible situations all the time but we can’t imagine how a game on the beach ended up this way,” he shared. “The family is destroyed. They are in deep shock.”
