Man In Critical Condition After Sand Tunnel He Dug Buried Him Alive

A Texas man was brought out of a medically induced coma Monday evening as he was in critical condition after being briefly buried alive under a sand dune that collapsed on top of him while on a vacation over the weekend in Florida.

Lee Goggin, 35, of the Dallas area in Texas had dug a hole into the side of a sand dune at Crescent Beach near St. Augustine on Sunday. The tunnel was said to be large enough for him to fit inside the hole. Shortly after 1 p.m. EST on Sunday, the whole thing collapsed on him. The victim’s sister called it a “freak accident.”

“The patient was in a sand tunnel/hole parallel to a dune when he became buried under a sand collapse,” St. Johns County Fire Rescue wrote on Facebook.

Goggin had been buried under two to three feet of sand before the country’s fire rescue team was able to rescue him. He was immediately rushed to Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine in a critical condition.

Noone other than Goggin was involved or injured in the incident, officials confirmed.

The man’s sister, Rachel Goggin Burt, told officers that her brother was digging through the sand for a while as his wife, Courtney had been capturing it on video, the Miami Herald reported.

"He essentially dug a tunnel by hand," Jeremy Robshaw, spokesman for St. Johns County Fire Rescue, told the newspaper. "He was digging alongside the dunes, which are about three to five feet high. Apparently, the sand collapsed on him and the individual was trapped."

Investigators in Florida told First Coast News in Jacksonville that Goggin went past a "do not enter" sign and made his way down to the beach Sunday afternoon. After the accident, he was carried to the hospital by a medical helicopter.

According to a GoFundMe page set up for Goggin on Sunday, he reportedly had a heartbeat but was unable to breathe on his own.

"At 3:30 p.m. they [will] begin the reboot process which will begin to warm his body," his sister wrote on Facebook on Monday. "We continue to ask for prayers for strength for Lee’s body to fight harder than he ever has and come back. We know with our Awesome God that this is possible and it will happen. We serve a Mighty God that will never leave us."

Collapsing holes and tunnels dug into beach sand can be deadly. There have been instances of such incidents in the past.

On July 31, 2017, Ashley O'Connor, 30, a Texas woman was found buried in a hole on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. Police determined that she died of asphyxiation. The medical examiner's office ruled her death as an accident.

In July 2017, a 12-year-old boy from California died after he dug a tunnel into the side of a sand dune which collapsed on him. In another incident in June 2017, an Indiana teen was severely injured after jumping into a seven-foot pit he had dug in the sand.