A suspected thief who was digging a tunnel with his accomplices in Rome to possibly rob a bank was buried for about eight hours in rubble on Thursday when the ceiling collapsed.
A suspected thief who was digging a tunnel with his accomplices in Rome to possibly rob a bank was buried for about eight hours in rubble on Thursday when the ceiling collapsed, before being rescued, the carabinieri confirmed to the AFP. “Two men, from Naples, were arrested for resisting a public officer and two others, from Rome, were arrested for the damage caused, one of which is the one who was in the hole and is now in hospital “, said the Carabinieri press service.
“The investigation is still ongoing, we do not exclude that they are thieves, it is one of the hypotheses”, added the press service. Dozens of firefighters were busy around a hole to relieve and get out a man who remained buried under hundreds of kilos of earth and building materials after the collapse of the tunnel, noted AFP-TV. According to media reports, the man and his accomplices, who were arrested near the empty store under which they were digging the tunnel, are suspected of having targeted a nearby bank and planned to enter it at the end of the week, on the occasion of August 15, the feast of the Assumption, when all of Italy stops.
The presence of an artisanal tunnel in this area is difficult to find any other explanation than that of a missed shot, a hypothesis relayed by all the daily newspapers. The Corriere della Sera thus writes “The thief stuck nine hours in the tunnel”, for La Stampa “the objective was to enter the vault”, while La Repubblica headlines “He digs a tunnel for a theft but remains buried”. “Nobody really paid attention because this store had been rented out and everyone thought it was being restructured, besides there was no noise,” Michele told AFP-TV, a resident of the building overlooking the collapsed part of the tunnel.