Teen, 17, buried alive after sand tunnel collapses at Italian beach

A 17-year-old died after a sand tunnel he was digging on an Italian beach suddenly caved in and buried him alive – leaving his panicked father, who had been napping, clawing at the shore in a desperate attempt to save him.

The teen, identified as Riccardo Boni, was on vacation with his parents and three younger siblings at Montalto di Castro Beach in Lazio Thursday afternoon when he carved out a five-foot tunnel in a remote area of the coastal edge, according to Italian media outlets. 

But when he tried to crawl through the makeshift tunnel, it collapsed, trapping him – and his terrified screams – beneath the heavy layer of sand.

“He had built a tunnel but maybe when he was underneath, everything collapsed on him,” one beachgoer said of the horrific incident. 

“You couldn’t see anything from the beach, the hole was gone, no one could see that he was under there.”

The packed beach remained unaware of the freak accident until the boy’s dad, who had been dozing under a beach umbrella, woke up and realized his eldest son was missing.

The frightened father eventually found his son’s t-shirt and flip-flops next to the caved-in trench and started digging alongside passersby and lifeguards – but it was too late, police said.  

“No one realized what had happened,” Carabinieri police Lieutenant Daniel Tramontana 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.” 

Boni was unresponsive when pulled from the sand, and paramedics were unable to revive him.

“The sand when it closes in on you is so heavy,” another witness told local outlets.

“It doesn’t allow even a little oxygen to get through and it’s not easy to extract people from it because it tends to cave in. A few minutes and you die of suffocation.”

Authorities have since launched an investigation into the boy’s tragic death.

They will decide if an autopsy is necessary to confirm the cause of death, local outlets reported.

“We deal with terrible situations all the time but we can’t imagine how a game on the beach ended up this way,” Tramontana told The Sun.

“The family is destroyed, they are in deep shock.”