Julen Rosello: Search for two-year-old boy who fell into borehole ends with discovery of his body

Child’s remains found early Saturday after Spanish miners dug tunnel to reach him

A two-year-old boy who fell down a borehole in Spain nearly two weeks ago has been found dead by rescue workers.

Julen Rosello’s remains were found in the early hours of Saturday morning by miners digging a tunnel to reach him, said a spokeswoman for the Spanish government’s office in the province of Malaga.

The child fell down the narrow, 360ft-deep borehole on 13 January while his family was preparing Sunday lunch in the countryside near the village of Totalan.

The tragic accident sparked a complex rescue operation. A mining crew drilled day and night to reach the boy, but efforts were frequently hampered by layers of hard rock and soil.

“At 1.25am, the rescue teams reached the area of the well where they were looking for Julen and they found the lifeless body of the little one,” the spokeswoman said.

Julen's parents Jose and Vicky Rosello (AFP/Getty)

She said that a judicial commission would investigate the accident.

In one of the few media interviews the child’s parents gave before the body was found, father Jose Rosello said the family was heartbroken but hoping for a miracle.

He and the boy’s mother, Vicky, stayed near the scene of the rescue operation over the past 13 days, spending some nights sleeping inside a tent.

During the nearly two-week ordeal, officials came up with several alternative routes to reach the toddler. The dry waterhole, only 10in wide, was too narrow for an adult to get into, and hardened soil and rock blocked equipment from reaching the area where he was trapped.

A series of small explosions set off since Thursday afternoon, including a fourth one late on Friday, helped the crews make their way through a horizontal tunnel to the cavity. Before that tunnel could be dug some 230ft underground, a vertical shaft was drilled during days of painstaking engineering to bring miners and rescue experts up and down.

Miners worked day and night to rescue the boy at the borehole near Totalan (EPA)

The difficulty of the operation had prompted Jorge Martin, a spokesman with the Malaga province civil guard, to say: “We have to be very careful, here the mountain is in control.”

Only hair that matched the boy’s DNA was found in the borehole and no other verbal or visual contact had been madse with him. Despite that, officials had refused to speculate over whether Julen could have survived so long.

The El Pais newspaper reported that the boy’s parents had lost another son, Oliver, when the three-year-old suffered a heart attack during a walk on the beach two years ago.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez offered his condolences to the couple and paid tribute to rescue workers.

“The whole of Spain feels the infinite sadness of Julen’s family,” he said. “We’ve followed closely every step to reach him. We will always appreciate the tireless efforts of those who looked for him over the past days. My support and affection to his parents and loved ones.”

Additional reporting by agencies