Argentine footballer loses wife and kids in Venezuela quake

Lucas Trejo, an Argentine footballer, lost his wife and two children after strong twin earthquakes hit Venezuela, his team announced on Sunday.

Trejo plays for Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira, a second-division team in Venezuela. He searched for his wife Yanina and children Aaron and Ainhoa in the rubble for three days before rescue workers found their bodies, US media reported.

“Club Sport Maritimo La Guaira deeply mourns the irreparable loss of our player’s wife and children,” the team posted on Instagram with a family photo.

Trejo, who is 38, was at a training camp in Caracas when the quakes struck on Wednesday evening. The earthquakes registered magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, as stated by CNN.

He rushed back to his home in La Guaira, the area hit hardest by the disaster. “He found absolutely nothing of what the building itself had been,” Trejo’s brother-in-law Ricardo Ardiles told CNN.

Venezuelan authorities reported that nearly 1,500 people have died and tens of thousands are still missing as of Sunday.

On Sunday, Club Sport Marítimo La Guaira expressed its sorrow over Trejo’s family loss in a social media post, sharing a photo of the four together. Trejo is seen with one hand on his daughter’s shoulder and the other around his wife.

“Lucas, you are not alone. Your family at Maritime La Guaira is with you,” the post read.

Last week’s disaster, described by the US Geological Survey as a rare “doublet,” involved two major earthquakes occurring just 39 seconds apart. The quakes also affected several soccer players in the country.

Among the victims was Yimvert Berroteran, a young talent. The Venezuelan national team and the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF) reported his death on Friday.

The 18-year-old had played at the U-17 World Cup in Doha a few months ago and recently represented the U-20 national team.

The quake also took the lives of young players Víctor Palacios and Razan Sijaa, according to FVF and their clubs.

Another player, Héctor Bello, shared that his partner died while trying to protect their toddler. Bello wrote on social media on Saturday, “I’ll make sure to remind our baby girl how wonderful you were and how much you loved her.”

Tourists and foreign residents were also among the dead, including eight Chinese nationals, as reported by Chinese state media on Sunday.