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E-mail StoryNeighbor helped dig out buried boy
| Wednesday, Mar 19 2008 9:01 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Mar 19 2008 8:58 PM
Julio Munoz spiked a shovel into the ground with little hope.
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Neighbors and friends Monica Weinman, left, and Julio Munoz hug after the possible kidnapping of Zane Newton. Munoz says the neighborhood is tight-knit.
Bakersfield police detectives and technician at the scene where a boy, who was originally reported kidnapped, died after a culvert collapsed on him in a sump.
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“Zane, Zane!” Munoz yelled.
“Zane knows me very well,” Munoz said. “He recognizes my voice.”
It was too late.
Zane Anthony Newton, 9, died Wednesday when a culvert collapsed on him at a sump near Saint Helens Avenue and Kaiser Peak Court in south Bakersfield.
Following a tip, police found the body Wednesday afternoon in the sump.
Munoz said he was just down the street when he saw officers going into the sump. Then he heard an officer yell for help.
Munoz climbed the fence and began digging by hand with others, trying to rescue Zane. Later Munoz ran to a neighbor’s house to get a shovel.
“I was just praying and hoping he was still alive and respond,” Munoz said.
Eventually police escorted the residents out of the sump and recovered the body.
Standing across the street, with dozens of neighbors milling around, Munoz said the story circulating earlier in the day — that Zane had been shot and kidnapped — never seemed right to him.
“I just had a gut feeling that to me the story didn’t match,” said Munoz, a neighbor of the Newton family. “I just didn’t buy that story.”
His voice cracking from time to time, Munoz said his children played often with Zane.
“He’s like one of my kids,” he said.