This five-year-old boy has been killed by a mudslide that crashed through the home and also partially-buried his mother following a period of heavy rains in Brazil.

The youngster was reportedly killed by the landslip in the Brazilian municipality of Santa Maria de Itabira over the weekend.

Bruce Dener Goncalves’ father, 37-year-old Dawid Dener da Silva Goncalves, recalled what happened on the night of the tragedy.

He was woken up by a noise outside the house and left his wife and son asleep in bed to find out what was going on. He then came across water entering the outhouse.

He told local media: “I left the house to see what was going on in the bathroom, and when I crouched down, along came the mud. It happened in a matter of seconds.”

The outhouse’s walls ended up saving the mechanic, but when he went back to his family, he found his house engulfed in mud with his wife partially buried and only her arm sticking out.

He managed to dig out a passage to her face so she could breathe, but according to Dawid: “She just told me to save our son.”

Sadly, he did not have time to do anything, and it was up to firefighters to locate the youngster, who found his dead body on 22nd February, over 30 hours after the disaster.

The victim’s mother was fortunately saved and taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Belo Horizonte for a broken femur.

Bruce was buried the following day. His dad told local media: “I couldn’t leave him in the mud. Thank God I managed to bury my son. I’m a little more relieved, but a father’s grief is lasting.”

According to reports, the heavy rains in Santa Maria de Itabira killed six people in total.

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