Massimiliano was at work when police told him a toddler’s body was buried in his backyard

Forklift driver Massimiliano Balbiani was at work early on Monday morning when he suddenly got a call from a police officer who told him they suspected there was a human body buried in his backyard.

The father of three jumped in his car and raced home in a state of shock.

Massimiliano Balbiani at his home in Saltbush Crescent, Brookfield, where the remains of a toddler were found this week.Credit: The Age

His teenage son had stumbled out of bed to find police swarming the four-bedroom, brown-brick house in Saltbush Crescent, a quiet street in Brookfield in Melbourne’s outer north-west.

Police covered the windows of the home in blue tarp and told Balbiani and his family to stay inside.

For hours, investigators scoured the backyard using specialised ground-penetrating machines before focusing their attention on digging up a section of the lawn next to a concrete slab at the back door.

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About 1.30pm, underneath a small patch of dry grass, next to an old trampoline and only metres from the house, police discovered a shallow grave, concealing the remains of an 18-month-old-boy, buried there for 11 years.

“I was horrified,” Balbiani said on Thursday as he stood next the freshly disturbed earth where the child’s remains were found.

“I have lived in this place for eight years. My children have played outside in this yard many times. I don’t know what to think. It is very, very sad.

“Something bad has happened here. It is an awful and shocking thing.”

He said the body had been buried in dirt less than 50 centimetres deep.

Police believe the remains are that of a toddler who mysteriously disappeared in 2014.

‘Something bad has happened here. It is an awful and shocking thing.’

The child was not reported missing at the time and his family are understood to have left the country shortly after his death.

Victoria Police are now trying to locate the family, who are believed to be somewhere in Europe. Sources told this masthead the family are believed to be from Kosovo, a landlocked country in south-east Europe, bordered by Albania.

Victoria Police are understood to have been told about the body by one of the child’s relatives who could no longer carry the burden of the secret.

In a statement, police said the missing persons squad had assumed primacy of the investigation, and it remained ongoing.

None of the neighbours to whom this masthead spoke have lived in the street long enough to know the identity of the family, but expressed their horror and distress at the grim discovery.

“It is horrible to think something like that has happened in your own street,” one neighbour said. “It has shaken us all up.”

Massimiliano Balbiani at his home in Saltbush Crescent, Brookfield, where the remains of toddler were found this week.Credit: The Age

Balbiani said the coroner had arrived at his home about 6.30pm on Monday. The remains were placed in a bag before being loaded into an ambulance.

Detectives from the Melton Crime Investigation Unit confirmed on Wednesday that an investigation into the boy’s death had commenced earlier this year following the tip-off.

“On Monday ... with assistance from the Missing Persons Squad, Australian Federal Police, Major Crime Scene Unit and the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, the property was searched,” police said in a statement.

“A preliminary excavation of the area uncovered the yet-to-be formally identified human remains around 1.30pm.

“The coroner has been advised, and a post-mortem will occur in due course.”

But for Balbiani, there is now a sense of eeriness in the home he has lived in for almost a decade with his wife, two sons and young daughter.

He has mowed the lawn in the backyard countless times. His children have grown up playing outside on the grass and spent hours jumping on the trampoline less than a metre away from where the child’s remains were found.

The 53-year-old Italian migrant said he was now grappling with thoughts about what had happened to the little boy.

“The only relief is that they can finally give a proper burial to this poor child and hopefully find out what happened to him,” he said.

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Police stressed that the current residents of the property had no knowledge or connection to the investigation of the people who had lived there at the time in question.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

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