An escape tunnel used by organized crime had an unexpected and no doubt startled visitor early Tuesday when a Sinaloa man fell into it while sleeping on a couch in his living room.

A large hole suddenly opened in the floor of the man’s Culiacán home due to the presence of the subterranean passageway below, causing him to drop into the tunnel in an event that must have seemed like a bad dream.

The Sinaloa government said in a statement that an approximately 25-year-old man suffered minor injuries after falling about 2 1/2 meters.

The tunnel, which the government said had been used as an escape route by members of organized crime, leads to a nearby house that was seized by the army 11 years ago.

Citing neighbors, an Imagen Televisión report said that the house is now used as a garbage dump.

The Sinaloa government said that the tunnel is presumed to run beneath at least eight homes in the Juntas de Humaya neighborhood before opening at a canal.

Imagen Televisión said that several houses have sunk due to the presence of the tunnel and have structural problems.

Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya dispatched his public works minister to the home where part of the living room floor collapsed to inspect the damage. José Luis Zavala Cabanillas said that workers from his ministry would fill in the tunnel to avoid additional collapses in that home and those around it.

Numerous narco-tunnels used by cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States have been found on Mexico’s northern border.

A 1.3-kilometer subterranean passageway between Tijuana, Baja California, and San Diego, California, that was discovered by U.S. authorities in 2020 is the longest cross-border drug tunnel ever found.

Convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – who has been described as a tunnels mastermind – famously used a tunnel to escape from a México state maximum security prison in 2015.

With reports from Animal Político