A 17-year-old boy died over the weekend after he became trapped inside a deep hole on a North Carolina beach when a dune collapsed, burying him under a mound of sand, officials said.
The Chesapeake, Virginia, teen wound up trapped inside a hole on Saturday at North Carolina's Cape Hatteras National Seashore that had been dug in a back-dune area not visible from the beachfront, the National Parks Service said in a statement.
Before Seashore law enforcement rangers helped to pull the teen from the hole, family and friends went to search for him and discovered him buried under several feet of sand from a collapsed adjacent dune, officials said.
The National Parks Service said rangers worked with family members "to extract the teen while simultaneously performing CPR" on the boy, but he could not be saved.
"We urge visitors not to dig deep holes on the beach due to the danger they present to beachgoers and emergency response staff," David Hallac, the superintendent of the National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in the statement.
The National Parks Service warns on its website that sand at Cape Hatteras National Seashore is "prone to collapsing" and that beach-goers should never "dig a hole too deep where you find your head below the sand."
Just last year, a 13-year-old boy died after he dug a tunnel in the side of a sand dune, and it collapsed on him at Utah's Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, officials said at the time.
