A man has been rescued after becoming trapped in a tunnel in central Rome he allegedly dug to rob a bank.
It took firefighters eight hours to extricate the man, who was buried six meters deep, after part of a street collapsed on Via Innocenzo XI, near the Vatican.
Emergency services were alerted after receiving a call from one of four suspected gang members who managed to escape from the collapsed tunnel on Thursday morning.
First responders inspect a tunnel discovered after part of a road collapsed in central Rome. Photo: Vigili del Fuoco/AFP/Getty ImagesA voice was discovered under the rubble and as rescuers carried out the complex operation, digging a parallel hole to reach the man, he repeatedly shouted: “Help, I’m asking you to get me out”, according to Italian media reports.
The man, who was given liquid nutrition and an oxygen tank to breathe, was eventually pulled out alive to sustained applause from a large crowd who had gathered to watch.
He was taken to the hospital and reportedly suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
Two people from Naples were arrested for defying an officer and two people from Rome for damaging public property, a police spokesman told AFP. “We’re still investigating. We do not rule out that they are thieves; it’s one of the theories,” he said.
Rescuers at the scene in Via Innocenzo XI. Photo: Grzegorz Gałązka/Sipa/Rex/ShutterstockThe man from Rome had already been convicted of robbery, as had the four other suspected gang members, who had all been arrested, police told local media.
Police believe they dug through the tunnel that started under a shuttered shop to reach the vault of a nearby bank.
They are said to have dug up a bit each day so they could carry out their heist on Monday, the holiday of Ferragosto, an Italian holiday comparable to Christmas, taking advantage of the bank’s closure and Rome’s semi-desertion.