Spanish authorities have finally recovered the body of Julen Rosello, the two-year-old boy who fell into a 230-foot well 13 days ago, sparking an intense and grueling rescue mission.
Hundreds of people have been working round-the-clock in the southern province of Málaga during the unprecedented rescue mission. The discovery of the boy’s body was finally confirmed in the early hours of Saturday morning by the central government's representative.
"Unfortunately at 1:25 am the rescue team reached the spot where they were looking for Julen and found the lifeless body of the little one,” wrote Alfonso Rodriguez Gomez de Celis on Twitter.
Shortly after the news broke a hearse arrived at the site to take the boy’s body to a local funeral home.
The rescue effort was constantly thwarted by the difficult terrain, including a plug of earth around 70 meters down – his presence in the well was confirmed by hair samples matching his DNA and a packet of sweets he had been carrying at the time of the fall.
READ MORE: Trapped toddler: Rescuers race to locate child who fell into 320ft hole (VIDEOS)
Specialist miners eventually sent down a parallel tunnel to break through into the borehole where they discovered the young lifeless body.
Julen fell down the 110-meter-deep illegal borehole while playing on the land of a relative. The alarm was raised by two passing hikers who heard the screams of the family after they realised what had happened. It had been dug in search of water but was not covered up properly.
This isn’t the first time Julen’s parents, José Roselló and Victoria García, have endured a tragedy of this magnitude. In 2017 they lost their other son Óliver, when he was three years old after he suddenly had a heart attack while the family were at a beach.
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